He Ain't Heavy, He's my Brother
by caffinebunny
Summary: Relationships are complicated. They get more so when people keep secrets. Nano 2009 fic. SPN/WaT/RK crossover. Complete! At last!
1. Chapter 1

Rating: FRT  
Genre: Drama/AU  
Crossover: Without a Trace/Rurouni Kenshin  
Spoilers: Jus in Bello through Metamorphosis (End S3, beginning S4)  
Warnings: I'm mean to people in this. I inflict Saitoh on Kenshin, Hendricksen on the boys and the Ghost Facers on *everybody*. And that's just for starters....  
Disclaimer: Not mine. The boys and co belong to Kripke, Kenshin to Watsuki and the WaT crew are part of Bruckheimer's stable...  
A/N: This is my NaNo fic, so it was written in November. It therefore goes AU after the episodes aired then.  
Summary: Relationships are complicated. They get more so when people keep secrets.

#####

It hurt to breathe. In fact, about the only thing it didn't hurt to do was lie still and attempt not to think. It was a familiar pain; his body seemed to have been expecting it; which suggested that he had been awake before.

Not that he remembered it.

Not that he wanted to remember it if this level of pain was any indication.

The noises around him seemed to indicate a hospital, and on opening his eyes he realized that he was in intensive care. That was new. He'd been in Accident and Emergency wards all over the States, had even been in observation wards with concussions and, on one memorable occasion after the arrest of a drunken number ten on the most wanted list, a gunshot wound to what the doctor had termed his gluteus maximus with a smirk on his face. Hendrickson had simply glared at Reidy and told him that if news that he had been grazed – alright, damnit, shot – in the butt got out to the rest of the Bureau, Reidy would be guarding DC's crosswalks for the rest of his career, no matter that FBI agents didn't generally get assigned to guard crosswalks.

Reidy. Reidy wouldn't even be guarding crosswalks any more, and that caught harder, hurt more than he had thought it ever would. But then, they had been partners practically since the Academy after completing their probationary period. It would be a struggle to work with someone new after ten years together, to have to learn someone else's habits and preferences, to work with someone else in the field as well as he and Reidy had worked. And to do all of that and keep what he knew about the _darker_ side of things a secret was going to be difficult, if not impossible.

He took a deep, fortifying breath and opened his eyes.

Tears sprang up instantly in the brightness of the room and he blinked furiously, trying to clear them. He must have made some sort of noise, because suddenly there was a woman, a nurse, leaning over him, speaking softly, telling him that he was in a hospital in Washington, DC, and that she was going to go get a doctor once she was sure he wasn't going to try to move and dislodge anything.

He hoped that his lack of amusement that she even thought she needed to tell him that was conveyed in his expression, but all she did was smile and pat his hand before she turned away from the bed and retreated with rubber-deadened steps.

Definitely the ICU, he decided, as less than a minute later she was back with a doctor in tow, an older man whose bearded face reminded him uncomfortably of John Winchester, and whose words, whose very presence, had as much of an impact on his life as the former Marine.

He idly hoped that the doctor didn't have children, but decided after a moment that the thought was probably fuelled by the morphine they were doubtlessly feeding him, and stamped on it ruthlessly. When he could recognize the morphine-thoughts? That was probably a good indication he had been hurt once too often. Maybe it was time to change jobs, he thought to himself as the doctor rambled on about burns and skin grafts and a remarkable lack of keloid scarring.

He tuned back in as the doctor asked, "So, aside from all that, how do you feel, Agent Hendrickson?"

Skewering the doctor with an irritated glare, he sighed. "Like I need to go and shoot something," he commented pointedly.

The doctor, it appeared, had dealt with one too many LEOs in his time, because he smiled with genuine amusement and, Hendrickson felt sure, would have patted his shoulder had that not been one of the places the burns were the most severe. "Well, give it a few weeks," he said cheerfully, "and you can be back down at the firing range working on your requalification."

For the record? He felt fairly certain that killing someone with a look was probably not any kind of supernatural skill he would ever have, but there were some days when he really wished it was.

#####

Hendrickson stared hard at the date on the paper he had been handed, as if staring could make it roll backwards. Three weeks. He had lost three whole weeks to the pain and the drugs, at least a week to recovery, despite his final session with the physical therapist, where he had informed the man that all the exercises he had been given were ones he could do in the FBI gym and he wouldn't have to sit around on his ass in bed in between. Admittedly, he would be sitting around on his ass at a desk, but at least there he could do something, even if it was just shuffle cold case files and weed out the dross from his e-mail inbox.

The hospital had not seen it that way, but the doctor had dealt with enough law enforcement to know that three weeks was the best he was likely to get, and had been decent enough to not make him sign out against medical advice, but had looked on him with the kind of resigned, pitying look that most doctors and nurses reserved for the hard-line LEOs, those who looked upon their profession as a calling and not merely a job.

It had felt longer than three weeks, he decided, particularly his time with Lilith. It might explain why, after only three weeks according to the calendar he felt well enough to return to work. He should ask Sam and Dean about that, he decided. Maybe the time with Lilith hadn't all been spent _here_. He thought back, trying to remember how long Dean had said he had left, and almost sagged with relief as he realized the younger man was still alive, still had time left.

There was still time to find him and ask if there was anything he could do to help, time to find him and his brother and beat the need to wear gloves into them. He sighed, realizing that it wouldn't be possible. He was barely healed, stuck behind a desk and tied to his appointments with the psychiatrist under threat of losing his job. They weren't going to let him take leave for some time, not to go traipsing off around the country.

He scrubbed at his face with his hand, carefully avoiding the burn which was gradually healing over, the flesh shiny and plastic looking. There had to be some way to help the boys.

He jumped as his computer beeped at him and he unburied the device from under the sheaves of paper covering his desk, jiggling the mouse to remove the screensaver. With a groan, he got to his feet and headed off to his meeting with Williams, the guy who had taken over from Groves after his death at the hand of Lilith's minions. He hadn't particularly liked the man, but at least he hadn't been a bureaucrat.

#####

Three hours after returning to work, Hendrickson blinked in disbelief at his supervisor. "Sir, they were already dead before the explosion. I sent you my report!" he protested, not quite able to believe that his report of the brothers' deaths hadn't done the slightest bit of good; not able to believe that the FBI thought him so easily swayed that he would be influenced by anybody in less than a few hours time in their presence without a very good reason.

Williams met his gaze for a moment before looking back at the file on his desk. He cleared his throat. "That's as may be, Hendrickson, but the fact remains you were held hostage by those men for several hours, and after the explosion we found no trace of their bodies. Add to that the fact their car had vanished from the impound lot out the back and what conclusions were we expected to draw? Everyone knows, thanks in the main to your own reports might I add, that those boys go nowhere without that car."

Hendrickson clamped his lips together firmly, not wanting to tell his boss precisely what he thinks he should have done, what he should do, and wanting desperately to curse a blue streak about Dean's attachment to that damned car.

Instead, he slowly released the breath he hadn't even realized he had been holding, carefully schooling his expression. Maybe he could write off any odd expression as a twinge from his burn scars. Maybe Williams would believe him if he said it was gas. He nodded, the action jerky and hastily abbreviated as it pulled in just the wrong way at the tightened skin on the side of his neck. "Was there anything else, sir?" he asked, as politely as he was able, given the circumstances, and Williams stared at him for a long, still moment, before eventually shaking his head.

"That's all for now. Make sure your report is written up for Agent Marks. She's taking over your case and she'll need any insight you can offer her." He frowned at Hendrickson as he hesitated, then his expression softened. "Victor, you've barely requalified for desk work. You think I don't know you go out to your car at lunch time and take a nap? I'm overlooking it because you're a damn good agent, but you aren't up to taking care of a case that requires so much field work. I'm sorry, because I know it means a lot to you, but you need to hand it off. At least for now.

"We'll discuss it again in six months."

At those final words, Hendrickson knew he had been dismissed; discussion over, no appeals. His lips tightened as he got to his feet and stalked from the room.


	2. Chapter 2

See Chapter 1 for header details

#####

A week later, Hendrickson had prepared his final report on the case, removed any reference to the supernatural, double checked to make sure he didn't sound like the transcripted version of Dean Winchester's interview with the Baltimore PD and was on his way to get Williams to sign off on it and then hijack Marks to come and get the Winchester file from the back of his car. It was her case now. She could lug it around.

He paused in the hall as he neared the office, strains of the hushed conversation reaching his ears through the wafer thin, federal issue door.

"...Stockholm syndrome," the psychiatrist's voice stated calmly, if overly quietly. Evidently this was not a conversation the pair wanted anyone overhearing. Hendrickson snorted quietly to himself. Too bad. They should have taken more care about closing the door. And sent him out on an errand. "I would recommend a residential course of treatment of not less than six months followed up by a leave of absence of the same length, and a reassessment of his cases since he began the hunt for the Winchesters. I would also recommend he cease duties as a field agent, effective immediately. There's no reason why, with time and the proper treatment, he couldn't be returned to duty as a desk agent."

His supervisor – his new supervisor, after Groves' death at the hands of the same demon which had possessed him – rumbled an agreement.

He backed into the nearby alcove as steps sounded further down the corridor – just in time, it turned out, as the door to Groves' replacement's office swung open and the psychiatrist stepped out.

He had been thinking about it for a while; had already given notice on his apartment anyway, because he had found something more in keeping with his new world view: an apartment in an old, converted church – deconsecrated, but it would be easy enough for a ground floor apartment to be reconsecrated he had realized after a little research. He figured that he would hold off on putting down a deposit on it now though, given the bombshell that had just been inadvertently dropped by his supervisor.

Quickly running through things in his mind, he waited until the psychiatrist had gone before grabbing a cup of water from the cooler and exiting the alcove, looking as unconcerned as if he hadn't just heard two people planning to flush his entire career for him.

#####

"Hey, Harris," he called across to his temporarily assigned 'partner' on his way past their paired desks, "I'm getting an early lunch. See ya later?"

The other man barely looked up from his computer, throwing a distracted wave in Hendrickson's direction as he worked on his report from the last cold case the pair had worked on together. And really, it took the man a week to write up a report? Hendrickson had submitted his the following morning, as had been his usual routine up until hitting the speed bump of life that was the Winchester case.

He snorted to himself as the door closed behind him. The Winchester case. Not that there actually _was_ a case beyond some firearms charges after you had taken into account the fact that the boys had really been putting a stop to the supernatural causes of the deaths of which they stood accused, but even counting those and given what he now knew the pair were fighting, there was no cause for the pair to be on the FBI's Most Wanted list. Of course, if he had only realized that sooner, he wouldn't be in this situation now. Nancy wouldn't be dead, Reidy would still be here and Groves would still be having his Bureau-renown laxative effect on the agents working beneath him.

As he got into his Government Issue sedan, a sense of relief washed over him. Now that the decision had been made; or at least forced up the schedule by an out of the loop Assistant Director and his sidekick psychiatrist; he was astounded at how much it felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. With a quiet smile to himself, he put the car in drive and headed for his usual lunch joint. No reason he shouldn't eat on the FBI's dime before vanishing off their radar.

#####

His first order of business was to finish packing up his apartment. Not that it was a particularly difficult task. Everything he hadn't needed in recent weeks was already boxed up and in a pre-paid storage unit under the name John Winchester ten blocks away. It was simple to collect scattered personal items into a box, clear out his gun safe of everything not service issue and stuff a bag with sensible clothes. After a moment's thought, he collected three suits from his wardrobe, along with the accompanying paraphernalia and carefully folded them into a second bag. He could sort out the creases later.

With a last look around, he sealed his badge and ID into a manila envelope, along with the code for the safe, and walked out of the door without looking back.

#####

The motel was on the outskirts of DC, a twin to the scores; if not hundreds; he had tracked the Winchesters through in the past two years. It was a far cry from the hotels the FBI had put him up in while tracking fugitives and testifying in trials, but it was warm, and dry, and the bed didn't smell too musty, all things considered. It also had the added benefit of being somewhere that no-one would ever imagine that he would spend the night in a million years.

He salted the window sills and the door the way Dean and Sam had salted them at the police station; thickly and with no chance of the lines being accidentally disturbed. A plan of action would be good, he decided as he opened the first box of files and pulled out the bundle of papers that some bright spark in Boston had thought to photocopy from the battered brown journal Dean seemed to carry everywhere with him like a security blanket.

That he would keep, at least until he could transfer the information to something easier to carry. A Palm Pilot would be good, at least for when he wasn't hot on the trail of something. Sam seemed only to revert to his laptop when they were researching something on the lead-up to a hunt from what he could tell, and even then, both brothers spent an inordinate amount of time in the records sections of libraries – something he had gleaned from eyewitness reports.

He looked at the stack of boxes and sighed, before resignedly getting to his feet and hanging the 'do not disturb' sign on the door. Getting the important information out of these things – particularly any useful contact numbers for other hunters who might not shoot him on sight when they found out who he was – was going to take a while. He rummaged through the information in the local information pack and came up with a fairly recent looking menu from a pizza joint that offered free delivery and didn't look like it would give him anthrax.

#####

Three days after his abrupt departure from the FBI, Hendrickson drove out to an empty lot on the edge of town. He pulled the now useless file, re-boxed and semi-ordered, from the trunk and cleared an area on the ground. No point causing the fire department to be called out because the fire had crept out of control and consumed the entire lot, after all.

He opened the first box file labeled Winchester, removed the files and carefully stashed the box in the back seat of his sedan so that the label was easily visible to anyone looking through the window, dumping the file; the official forms, his notes, any evidence accompanying the mostly hand-written or hand-typed sheets; into a pile in the exact center of the area he had cleared. He paused for a moment as he reached for the gas can, realizing, relishing the enormity of what he was about to do. He sprinkled a little gasoline onto the files then recapped the can tightly and wiped his hands before striking a match and dropping it onto the pile, smiling as the papers seared and scorched and blackened, charring as they burned.

He waited until the fire had burned down to embers before deliberately stirring up the ashes with the toe of his boot, mixing them up carefully. He'd heard of cases where they had managed to pull enough off the oh-so-fragile sheets of ash left by burning paper that words could be read, and he's going to make sure that there is no way that could happen here.

Finally, he pulled out his laptop and switched it on, inserting as he did so a CD that a friend had supplied him some time ago. Admittedly, it had been under somewhat false pretences, his friend believing that Victor was wiping a home PC of anything which may refer to the FBI before passing it on to one of those drop-in centers, but he hoped that his misguided colleagues would just assume that what he had done here was something to do with whatever brainwashing the Winchesters had allegedly subjected him to. Not that he wanted the Winchesters to get the blame for something they once again didn't do, of course, but he needed not to drag anyone else into this, and they were already in the FBI's sights.

He should know. He was one of the people who helped put them there; who made sure they stayed there.

After he has run this, he knows, it will be over. No more coming back to the Bureau. No more reprieve. This is the end of the rope and there is more, much more, than enough to hang himself with. They'll chuck him into a rubber room and throw away the key. It's a moment of great importance; one of those fulcrums upon which the rest of his life will hinge.

As he clicks run, as he destroys an entire three years of his life's work, he can't bring himself to care.


	3. Chapter 3

See chapter 1 for notes and disclaimer

#####

As he walked away from the scene of his permanent break with the FBI, he dropped the padded envelope containing his car keys into the first mailbox he passed – no postage, and only his former, now vacant apartment as the return address, but he figured the Bureau could afford to pick that up, at least. And sweat a little when they realize he has gone for good. He'd want to see their faces, if that didn't mean he would have to be in the same building, the same room, as the people who had rushed him into this decision.

He made his way to the rundown car dealership he had visited three days previously; by bus, obviously, paid for in cash and untraceable; and sees that his request has been honored. The red and white 1958 Plymouth Fury he had been so amused to find in this little ass-end of nowhere dealership is sporting a "Reserved" sign, freshly detailed and gleaming, if a little touched with rust around the edges – the car is fifty years old, after all, and in better shape than Hendrickson expects to be at fifty - and while he knows that it's going to take more than detailing to make the car precisely what he wants it to be, he feels lighter just knowing that now he has a chance. A trunk big enough to hide a body in, he remembered thinking when he saw the Impala for the first time.

He wondered idly how many bodies Dean's car; and it always was Dean's car, never mind that sometimes Sam had been spotted driving it; had transported over the years. Wondered if any of them had been anything close to human.

He paid the man with the money he had gradually withdrawn over three weeks, cutting back on things like groceries for a few extra dollars here and there, and provided his expertly crafted fake driver's license for the registration papers. The address is real, so is the name and social, just a few years out of date, and he hadn't realized until now how easy it was for the Winchesters to do this sort of thing, because the man barely checks the license, simply jotting the pertinent lines down on the form.

It was such a small dealership that by the time the man got around to putting the information any sort of computer, Victor would be long, long gone.

#####

Danny stared at the picture pinned up on the whiteboard. "Hey," he called to Jack as the team lead called them over to the conference table, "I know this guy. He was in my class at Quantico. What happened?"

Jack fixed him with a quelling stare which, as usual, bounced off Danny's shell of cheeky self-assurance, making the other half of the trouble twins smirk and duck his head. Jack turned the stare on Martin, not about to inquire as to whether Martin was amused about Danny being on the spot _again_ or whether it was one of those things he didn't want to know about again, and received about the same level of success. Cutting his losses, he waited until Elena and Sam had also seated themselves before gesturing to Viv to start the meeting.

"Alright. Special Agent Victor Hendrickson. Worked Major Crimes, mainly serial offenders. In pursuit of his last case, he was badly injured and in intensive care for several weeks. Severe burns from a gas explosion at a sheriff's office, which killed the local LEOs, their secretary, his partner and AD Groves.

"The gas explosion occurred in Monument, Colorado where he and Agent Reidy had finally caught up to his suspects. Dean and Sam Winchester. Serial killers, with a whole load of occult crap on their rap sheets including grave desecration and interfering with human remains. Hendrickson sent a message to the Bureau shortly before the explosion saying that the pair were dead, but it is now believed that he sent the report under duress. AD Williams is concerned that the pair came back to finish the job."

She nodded to the files that Jack had passed around to each of them. "The boys were raised by their paramilitary father, led a nomadic lifestyle. Despite this, the younger brother, Sam, won a full ride at Stanford, studying pre-law. He was due to interview for their law school, but that weekend he chose to take off with the brother he hadn't seen since he started college. His friends said his girlfriend had told them that their father had gone on a hunting trip and not come back, and that Sam was going to help his brother to find him, but this could not be verified with the girlfriend as she died in a fire that same weekend."

"What," Martin asked, "they killed her and took off across the country?"

Viv fixed Martin with a speculative look. "Hendrickson theorized that Dean killed her to cut Sam's ties with the normal life he had built at college," she informed him. "His father had disappeared leaving Dean alone, and according to the file Hendrickson built up on him, for this boy, family is everything."

Danny, who had been flicking through the file, chose that moment to speak up. "This is _all_ speculation, Viv. No-one's managed to hold onto them long enough to confirm or rule out any of it. The longest they were held was in a high security unit, and people were already dying when they got there, no change in the MO on the Winchesters' arrival. They escaped and the deaths suddenly stopped. There're statements from witnesses saying that these two saved people, and the only hard evidence is from that bank robbery. They weren't even the guys who initiated the hold-up. That was some guy, Ronald Raz- Rzn-Reznyk, who was shot by SWAT."

Jack cleared his throat. "The fact remains, these boys are the prime suspects in the disappearance of an FBI agent. Danny, Martin, Elena, you're off to DC to start at Hendrickson's apartment. Sam, everything you can get on the Winchester boys, I don't care if it's parking tickets or murder raps, find it. Viv, we're going to talk to AD Williams about Hendrickson."

#####

Elena fumed quietly to herself. She had been hoping that she and Danny would be partnered together. They had kept their relationship out of the office where possible, and had done the same with their break up, but while she now felt ready to give a relationship a better try, the only place she had seen Danny recently was in the office.

She couldn't understand it. She knew he still did things for her daughter, knew he still coached Little League when he had a Saturday off, but he was always on his way somewhere when she caught sight of him, always just out of earshot. She had been hoping that she and Danny would be assigned together on this case, with the necessity of a road trip and a stay away, so that she could finally corner him and discuss their future without it technically being during work hours.

Instead, Martin was going with them. She didn't have anything against the man personally, but he had a tendency to monopolize Danny's time, whether he meant to or not, and Elena just knew that with the three of them on this trip, the car would be filled with arguments about baseball, and the two male agents bickering like adolescents and the smell of greasy take out as they egged each other on to eat at worse and worse take out joints. She couldn't see how on earth Viv found it so endearing when it was just like being dropped into the middle of a frat house.

It was starting already, she noticed. Martin had discreetly checked around to see if anyone was taking too much notice of him before vanishing off to the bathroom, but clearly hadn't been sufficiently thorough in his covert check, because Danny watched him go, eyes narrowed suspiciously, then sat twitching like an overly caffeinated computer tech from the AV lab; one who had just found a new virus and was torn between downloading it to analyze it and deleting it before it could do any damage; for ten minutes before following.

#####

Shaking, Martin waited until the men's bathroom cleared and pulled out his cell. He dialed the number of his father's pager, a number he knew by heart and sent the code he had been hoping never to use.

His phone rang almost immediately, Unknown flashing up on the screen. Of course his father would want this conversation off the record.

"Tell me," his father demanded, not giving Martin the chance to speak. Not that Martin had expected it.

He cleared his throat. "Agent Hendrickson has gone missing. We're tracking the Winchesters to try to find him."

The silence on the end of the line stretched out for far too long, and he just knew he had said something wrong, knew that even though he was passing on all he knew like he had been instructed, he was going to be punished. His knees nearly folded in relief when his father said instead, in a thoughtful voice, "So the rumors are true. The elder brother made a deal."

There was another brief pause, then his father snapped, "Keep me posted," and hung up.

He was splashing water on his face when the door opened behind him, and it took all his self control not to jump in surprise as Danny called, "Hey, Fitz, hurry up! Jack wants us in DC yesterday."

He heard Danny's footsteps stutter to a stop and resisted turning. "Be out in a minute," he ground out. Even to his own ears, his voice sounded shaky but he hoped valiantly that Danny would miss it.

No such luck. He heard the door lock click as Danny stepped further into the room. "Fitz, man, you okay?" he asked. "You don't sound so good."

Martin straightened, grabbing a paper towel from the dispenser and scrubbing his face dry, an attempt to hide the lack of color with the ruddiness from the mild abrasion, before turning to face Danny. From Danny's expression he obviously failed at hiding that as well.

"Fitz?" Danny asked again.

"I'm fine, Danny," he managed. "Must have eaten something that didn't agree with me."

That, at least, drew a snort of amusement, and Danny's face became a little less suspicious. "Surprised that doesn't happen more often," he teased gently.

His tone rang false in Martin's ears. Danny didn't believe him then. He was doubtlessly letting it slide now to grill him about it in detail later, and Martin just knew that this time he couldn't let Danny's determined coaxing pull the story from him, which was only going to make Danny more determined to get it.

Resigned to his fate, Martin let his brows rise. "I'm not the one who eats hot-dogs from every single hot dog vendor they come across," he pointed out. He knew that it wouldn't dissuade Danny from trying to find out what was going on, but it might be possible to make him less worried about it and therefore less likely to press.


	4. Chapter 4

Bit of a shorter chapter this time, but this is where the cut fell.

Header details and disclaimer in chapter 1…

#####

Sam fell to his knees beside his brother's body, carefully pulling the broken form into his arms, not caring about the blood which transferred from the still warm flesh to his own clothes, soaking through to reach his skin. He didn't even move when he heard footsteps in the room behind him, knowing that they wouldn't be anything to do with Lilith. Not here; not now.

"Sam?"

Bobby. He knew that at some point he'd have to let go of the body, let Bobby help him take care of his brother, but right now he couldn't manage to uncurl himself from around his brother. And he knew that they needed to get out before the owners of the house came back from where he had hidden them in the basement with salt over the thresholds.

His eyes blurred and he hunched over more as Bobby sighed and crouched next to him. "C'mon Sam," he coaxed. "We need to salt and burn him. It's what he would want. He doesn't want to end up a revenant."

Sam sniffed, trying desperately not to let go of the tears that were threatening to fall. If he let them start now, he didn't think he would be able to stop. "But he's not going to, is he?" he asked, voice thick. "His soul's stuck in Hell, so he's not going to get raised as anything."

Bobby's hand tightened on his shoulder, attempting to comfort him. Bobby really wasn't much good at this emotional stuff.

He jerked in surprise at the click of a door opening, before realizing it must be the Fremonts emerging from the basement now that they could hear no more sounds of fighting above their heads. Mr. Fremont had tight hold of his daughter, his wife clutching the back of his sweater as they edged into the room.

Mrs. Fremont gasped in shock at the sight of Ruby lying on the floor, but hurried to Sam's side as she saw him clutching Dean. Remembering him as the man who had saved her daughter's life, she rushed in to see if she could help, but Sam was glad that Bobby stopped her before she could try to take his brother from his arms, before she could see the volume of blood Dean had lost which put paid to any thoughts that he might still be alive.

#####

Bobby pulled the Fremonts aside, taking the conversation to the kitchen when Mrs. Fremont looked like she wanted to say something to Sam.

"Listen," he told them, "The demon that possessed your daughter, Lilith, is bad news. I know that you're gonna want to get outta here just as soon as you can, but you take my number, because you're going to need someone to talk to about this and I got a few contacts who could help you out."

He handed over a business card and saw Mr. Fremont's face screw up in confusion.

"Singer's Salvage?" he asked, almost wanting to challenge him about it but not quite daring – after all, Bobby was the one with the shotgun right now.

Bobby nodded. "Keeps me solvent," he said with a half shrug. "Not so much of a rush that I can't get out when I need to, and it's good to have a place to come back to," he said softly. He paused briefly. "You need any help at all dealing with this, you call me. You get me?"

Mr. Fremont stared at him, seemingly frozen, but Mrs. Fremont stepped forward, taking the card and pocketing it before her husband could ask any more questions. "That's very kind of you, Mr. Singer," she murmured with a brief glance back at the room they had just left. "Is…Is there anything we can do to help?"

Staring at her for a long moment, Bobby eventually nodded. "Do you have a blanket?" he asked. "We need to. Well, we should clear up and go," he finished, feeling that his remarks were a little lame, but unable to come up with a better way to tell this young family that everything was okay, or as okay as it could be now, and that they would sort out all the bodies which were inconveniently scattered about the house and yard.

#####

They burned Ruby's body and the bodies of Lilith's unnamed minions in the center of the avenue, standing guard until the row of fires had burned down to ashes and bones before packing up each set of bones individually and stowing the bags in the flat bed of Bobby's truck.

Dean's body Sam carefully wrapped tightly in the blanket the Fremonts had donated to them, almost flinching away from the icy feel of Dean's skin, but refusing Bobby's help as he carried the mortal remains of his big brother to the Impala and loaded him gently into the back seat.

With rigor come and gone, it was far too easy to fold his brother into the seat, even taking into account the need to make sure the body was entirely on the plastic tarpaulin spread over the back seat. Dean would pitch a fit when Sam found a way to get him back if he let anything ruin the leather seats.

Without waiting for Bobby, Sam set off, not bothering to return the waves of farewell from the Fremonts. Yeah, they'd saved the trio from Lilith, but Dean had still not found a way free of the deal, all their planning being for naught as Ruby revealed herself to be Lilith at the last.

If it was the last thing he did, he was going to hunt down that bitch and make her understand why you did not mess around with the Winchester family, blood or otherwise.

#####

He was in a bar almost three weeks after his split from the Bureau when he heard the news; just minding his own business, honest, officer. Evidently a hunters' bar, though Hendrickson didn't know enough about the community to fit in well right now. He kept himself to himself and minded his beer, idly tracking rumors and news stories through the Internet – thank God for stolen wi-fi – while keeping half an ear on the conversations surrounding him.

"…shame it was the older brother," someone was saying. "Was something not quite right about the younger one these last couple of years from what I heard, but Dean was a good guy to watch your back in a tight spot."

Hendrickson froze, forcing himself not to move, not to react, not to go over and demand more information. They hadn't managed to get out of the deal then. He took a drink of beer to cover the shaking in his hands, trying to push aside the shock to think about things rationally. He wondered if, in the end, staring down the barrel of whatever gun was pointed at him, Dean had felt that it was all worth it; wondered if he had felt that his brother's life had been a fair trade for his own.

He took another swallow, the beer tasting like ashes in his mouth. He hadn't liked the boys much, but they had saved his ass even though they had no reason to; when they could just as easily have left him to die. Of course, if they had he wouldn't have wound up wishing he was dead under Lilith's hands, but equally, he could have been dragged down to Hell – something he was now utterly, completely certain existed – by the demon if he had still been possessed when the boys performed their mass exorcism and be enduring similar tortures still. At least Lilith had lost interest when the three of them had ceased to scream.

No, he hadn't liked them much, but he respected what they did now that he knew what it was. Had done, in Dean's case, he amended. And he didn't know what Sam would be doing without his brother around. The brother who, for all his 'Aw, shucks' attitude was by far the more ruthless of the pair, which was something he hadn't expected.


	5. Chapter 5

See part one for header notes and disclaimer…..

Kenny Spruce stared at his friend Andrew Goodson. Andrew Goodson, MS, he reminded himself, who was embarking upon a PhD in Seismology. Had embarked, in fact.

Which was why he had called Kenny after not speaking to him in six years and asked if he could come and look at some data for him.

He had frowned in bewilderment. "But Andy," he had protested, "I'm not a seismologist. I wouldn't know where to start!"

But Andy had waved off his protestations and sat him down with the relevant data in easy to read tables, and had sat with Kenny to explain what was what. Kenny had stared at the data blankly, then realized something startling.

"This sensor," he said, "This one here. It's not anywhere near a fault. It's not near any existing hot-spots. It shouldn't have had an event. Was someone blasting nearby?"

Andy shook his head. "Nope. No applications to detonate. No accidental detonations. No obvious signs of any type of activity either human or geological that could explain a single shock with no after effects, and no aftershocks of any kind were detectable, even by the most sensitive of seismographs in the area."

"What if…" Kenny began, then tailed off as he realized that Andy was looking at him hopefully. He sighed. "Okay, okay," he broke down. "I'll take it to Harry and Ed. They'll get a kick out of investigating it. You want it brought back when we've finished?"

"No way, man," Andy denied. "Get it out of here. It's futzing with my data. Of course," he continued, "If you were to bring it to me off the record, it would be interesting to see what you guys found."

#####

"So that's it?" Danny asked. "One of our own vanishes with two serial killers as the suspects, and we can't do anything except confirm that there were no prints but his own on his car, next to the burned remains of his case notes?"

Jack sighed but nodded. "I don't like it either, Danny, but we can only go where the evidence takes us. He fairly obviously went of his own free will; it was very well organized, and if he wants to stay hidden, he'll stay hidden. He ditched his cell phone, his cards and his car because he knew we could trace them, and he did it voluntarily. No signs of a struggle and Williams actually confessed that he and the department psychiatrist might not have been as careful as they could be over making sure they weren't overheard when they were discussing a more formal assessment of his mental state. If he weren't a fellow agent, we would have shut down the investigation and sent it to be filed as a cold case a month ago at least."

Danny stared at him for a long moment, but eventually nodded, turning and walking out of Jack's office and not even bothering to try not to slam the door. Jack winced. Maybe he could find a case that necessitated sending Danny to Alaska for a week to cool the boy down.

He looked up in resignation as the door opened again, relaxing as he saw it was only Viv. "Next time you speak to your mother," he told her dryly, "You tell her that she's to make sure someone lets those boys know that if they show their faces anywhere in the tri-state area; and I mean absolutely _anywhere_; they will be in holding faster than they can say Bobby Singer."

Viv gave him a smile. "I'll let her know she can make free with her spoon," she promised. "He's definitely looking for the Winchesters?" she continued.

Jack nodded. "Yeah. He's not really getting anywhere, but he's looking. Wouldn't help if people were giving him information, anyway. The boys have been off the grid since Wyoming. Haven't been to any of their usual haunts, only stayed in touch with Singer sporadically, which he's pissed about. Lots of hunters out there would love to get their hands on Sam. They figure there's a reason he was targeted by Azazel, and general consensus is it was nothing good."

"Are you ever going to tell Danny?" Viv asked, receiving a distinctly unamused look from the man ostensibly in charge of the Missing Persons team.

"And have him go off in his usual firecracker impression? No. If he finds out, he finds out, but it's not worth stepping into the line of fire." He paused briefly. "You hear the rumor that Dean was out of the country for four months?" he asked.

Viv stared at him for a long moment. "Jack," she said softly, "Dean _died_. He was dead for those four months. I don't know how he came back, but however it happened, it woke my mom. And Bobby Singer himself confirmed it really was him and not some sort of revenant."

Jack returned the stare with interest. "That's not possible."

#####

Harry slowed the car quite considerably as they neared the gas station. He had been hoping to fill the car up here, but there was a man, apparently the owner, putting boards over all of the small shack's windows and talking to a large, black man with a notebook. Probably an insurance agent, given that a skip off to one side glittered with broken glass in the afternoon sun. A big, old, red and white car sat nearby.

Ed pulled up his video camera as they crawled past, commenting, "Could this be the effects of whatever mysterious seismic event occurred not two miles from this very spot?" before hitting stop and running the play back. "Wait, wait, all I got was your head and the car and Kenny. We need to go back and do it again!"

Harry glanced back. The large guy was watching them, an odd expression on his face. "We could stop on the way back?" he suggested. "They might be gone and we could have a proper look round."

There was a thoughtful silence from Ed, then Maggie, the master manipulator, piped up, "We should definitely come back when there's no-one there, then you can get all the footage you need."

He had thought she would be the perfect girlfriend; they had similar interests, after all; but when they had gotten together, she had wanted to talk to him about feelings. And go to movies. And sometimes go shopping. And he had gone, because he had thought that this was the sort of thing people did as couples, but then he had found out that the movie they were going to see was a romantic comedy and not the showing of the original, unaltered, completely unadulterated Star Wars: A New Hope, and that 'shopping' meant going to look at clothes in a clothes shop and not just going to the gaming store to drool over the latest games console and pick up the new graphics card she had ordered. And he had been honest with her when she asked if he thought the skirt looked okay.

It was a little confusing. If she hadn't wanted honesty, why had she asked him what he thought? He was starting to think Ed had been right with his accusation that she was a Yoko. Or maybe it was just that all women were crazy, because when he had broached the subject with his mother, she had smiled at him and patted him on the shoulder and told him that he would understand some day.

He had been all too glad when Kenny had sat directly behind him, although he kept shooting Maggie bemused looks, which Maggie was apparently carefully avoiding by the simple expedient of gluing her eyes to the passing scenery. It neatly circumvented the need for her to look at Harry as well, he realized.

He was distracted from his thoughts by Ed's cry of, "Hey, hey, hey, turn right here. Hey, you're gonna miss it!" He shook himself just in time to hit the brakes and pull the car into the narrower dirt track which would hopefully lead to the GPS coordinates they had been given by Kenny's friend from college, and prompting cries of protest from the back seat as equipment bounced around and dug into the backs of the rear seats.

As the car came over a slight rise, Harry slammed on the brakes again, eliciting curses from Ed as he dropped his video camera into the foot well. He scrabbled slightly frantically for it while trying desperately not to take his eyes off the trees, as though the scene would disappear if he so much as blinked.

The trees which lay flat on the ground.

"Tunguska," Kenny breathed in awe from next to Harry's ear.

Gazing upon the scene, somewhat awestruck himself, Harry could not have found a better description if he had had the unoccupied thought processes to try.


	6. Chapter 6

See part one for header notes and disclaimer.

They parked at the edge of the zone of flattened trees, Harry quickly taking a copious amount of photos of the way each of the trees was either snapped at the very base or uprooted and tipped sideways, as though a giant hand had simply reached down and pushed them over. Ed and Kenny hurried off, forging ahead to the center of the ring of felled trees with the video camera, already yelling ideas to each other.

Maggie rolled her eyes at the three of them and pulled out her newest toy; an EMF meter she had purchased from Radio Shack. The two guys they had met in the Winchester House; Sam and Dean; may have been humongous horse's asses, but the EMF meter was a really good idea, showing up any kind of supernatural activity and not just ghosts. She began trekking around the area, slowly spiraling to the center as she kept an eye on the readings she was getting.

She frowned as she drew nearer to the center of the ring of felled trees, giving the meter a quick slap. She was getting nothing but background readings, and with the size of the effect, the apparent power of the initial event, she should be getting something by now. She turned it over and checked the batteries were securely seated, then turned it back so that it was right side up again and abandoned the spiral approach, striding directly for the center, when Kenny suddenly wailed in distress. She found out why three strides later when, with a pathetic, electronic cry of distress and defeat, the EMF meter proceeded to throw up the highest reading she'd seen so far and promptly died.

She paused for a second, gaping at it, while Ed and Kenny panicked about the camera and how much of the recording they might have lost. There were even a few epithets about 'Chisel Chest' and his sidekick thrown in there for good measure as they were forcibly put in mind of the last time they had encountered an electromagnetic field this strong.

Making sure that the EMF meter was turned off at the switch; she removed the batteries too, to be certain no further damage was done to the device; she moved over to her brother and Kenny, with Harry tripping and stumbling across from the other side of the pair. "What? What is it?" Harry was demanding, and Maggie restrained herself from rolling her eyes. The boys might have a good plan and some great equipment – mainly thanks to her and her ability to sweet talk fellow geeks with more technical know-how than the boys – but as investigators they sometimes really sucked.

"There's a huge EMF spike," she told him. "It's wiped out the camera and the EMF meter."

Harry stared at her. "Whoa," he commented, eyes widening. "So whatever made this was really powerful. Did you find the center yet?" he asked, turning to Ed.

"Not yet," Ed admitted, before forging on enthusiastically. "C'mon! It's this way!"

A few minutes, and several changes of direction later, they were standing next to the simple wooden cross that marked an area of fallen-in earth. There was an embarrassed silence as they stared down at the grave.

Ed canted his head and frowned. "Maybe someone raised a really old corpse?" he suggested. "The older the corpse, the more power you need to raise it," he added with a sagely nod.

Maggie just looked at him. "And maybe it was a really pissed off vampire?" she asked her brother sweetly.

"Dude!" Kenny explained, then thought better of it. "Um. Maggie, I mean," he continued, sagging slightly. "The seismology report says that whatever happened, it happened in daylight. Not a vampire. Probably not a zombie. Sorry, guys."

"Well, maybe it was an _alien_," Harry suggested enthusiastically, "and whoever buried it didn't realize the corpse would disintegrate explosively!"

All four Ghost Facers contemplated this.

Eventually, Ed said, "Wouldn't there be more goo, man? Or, like, alien guts everywhere?"

There was further consideration, and Harry sagged, then suddenly brightened. "What if it was an invisible alien? We could be standing on the guts right now and never know it."

Maggie frowned. "You'd see the mud. The alien would be invisible, but where it mixed with the dirt, it would make mud."

"Well maybe it was a Highlander!" he exclaimed, seizing on the idea as a last ditch effort.

Kenny practically bounced. "Oh, that would be so cool!"

But Ed was shaking his head. "Dude, you can't say that, it's, like, some sort of trade name. Panzer/Davis would sue your ass if you used it! What about unkillable human of unknown origin?"

Everyone stared at him. It wasn't like Ed to shoot down theories.

"Oh," he said softly in the face of the stares. "Well, maybe we can brainstorm later?"

#####

They were nearly back at the car when they heard the sound of an engine. It was far too deep for a regular car, much deeper than Harry's mom's Toyota, and as they got close enough to see through the trees, Ed caught sight of a red and white paint job. An almost familiar red and white paint job. With a start, he realized why it was familiar.

"Hide!" he hissed. "It's the guy who was asking questions at the gas station."

At his urging, they ducked into the bushes as the man got out of the car and moved towards the area of felled trees. He took careful note of their car and checked something in his notebook then checked the car's tags. "Great," they heard him mutter, then he continued, "Kids! You can come out now, and tell me why you're here, or I can come find you!"

They looked at each other. "Aw, jeez," Ed muttered as he stood up, recognizing the voice of someone who could quite probably go from zero to really, really pissed in less than a minute. "Another amateur."

#####

Hendrickson smirked at the comment, watching the four Ghost Facers as they sheepishly edged into view and knowing that whichever of the kids had spoken, he probably wasn't supposed to overhear the remark.

"Way I see it, kids, I'm the former FBI agent and you guys are the amateurs," he told them. "Wanna tell me how come four city kids are out in the ass end of nowhere? And why I shouldn't just call the cops and tell them you're trespassing on private property?"

"But you can't!" the girl exclaimed. "We're just investigating-"

The guy next to her kicked her in the ankle and she abandoned what she had been about to say in favor of punching him in the arm, making him yelp in pain and hurry away from her. They must be the two Zeddmores, he decided.

Hendrickson rolled his eyes. "Okay, kids, here is what we are going to do," he told them, tone more patient than he was actually feeling. "You're going to follow me back to the gas station that you passed earlier, and we're going to pull over and have a little chat somewhere there are fewer midges to make a meal of us. You're going to tell me precisely what you found in the middle of that, and if you manage it without silly speculation and comments, then I will take you to see some people who will know what happened. Got that?"

The Ghost Facers all exchanged looks, but nodded in resigned agreement after a long moment. They all looked like they had just been sentenced to death by hanging, but they all nodded.

"Good," Hendrickson told them with a sharp nod, then informed them cheerfully, "And I know your tags, so if you bolt, I will call you in as being involved in a hit and run. Just so we understand each other."

#####

"Did you _see _what that car was?" Ed demanded as Harry got back behind the driver's seat of his mom's car.

Harry looked at him, blinked, looked at the other car more closely and his jaw slowly dropped. "Oh, _shit_," he muttered to the others. "He's driving _Christine_!"

Maggie and Kenny scrabbled in the back seat to get a better look. "Holy crap," Kenny muttered, while Maggie looked distinctly less impressed.

"It's a car," she stated mildly, not overly amused by the suggestion. "A red and white car. And Stephen King writes fiction. About small town Maine. Which is about half a country away from here."

The three boys stared at her.

Ed sputtered briefly, seemingly unable to believe what she had just said. "My own sister!" he exclaimed, then corrected himself. "My own, adopted sister! A skeptic! How many people think ghosts are fiction, and yet we have seen them with our very own eyes!"

Maggie gave him a dead arm. "You've seen Mickey Mouse at Disneyland but you don't think _he_'s real, do you?" she snapped, irritated. "Let's just tell him what we know, then he'll go away and we can get back to investigating whatever was in that grave."


	7. Chapter 7

See part one for header notes.

#####

Dean stared at his brother as Sam clicked away quietly on his laptop. It wasn't until Lilith had raised Nancy's ghost along with Meg and those two little girls to torment him and Sam and Bobby that he had stopped to wonder about what had actually happened at the Monument's sheriff's office after they had pulled out. Nancy had told them, had flat out _told them_, that Lilith hadn't even cared if they had lived or died, that she had simply wanted to torture them for helping Sam to escape her trap, such as it was.

He began tapping at the table, twitchy as he- as heck, but Sam shot him a pissy look that suggested he had better find something else to occupy himself, so he grabbed Dad's journal out of his jacket pocket and began flipping through it, looking for something, _anything_ to do with angelic lore but decidedly resigned to the fact that his father had thought angels just as mythical as unicorns; as mythical as Dean himself had believed them to be until one had dragged him out of hell.

He was just reaching the section about wendigos, and was contemplating updating it slightly, when Sam cleared his throat and he looked up.

Sam turned the laptop to face Dean without speaking.

"FBI Agent in Coma" read the headline on the screen, and Dean darted across the room to get a better look at the story it related to. "Dude," he exclaimed, "He survived?" He pulled the laptop closer, hurriedly scanning through the small print. "Sonavabitch," he breathed.

Sam shot him an amused smirk. "There's more. Apparently he was discharged early from the hospital. Like really early for someone with that percentage of burns. He went back to the Bureau; was working out of DC, flying a desk, and one day he just up and disappeared. It was a bit before the deal came due. I found the Missing Persons investigation report – they called in some guys from New York, apparently – and they haven't found him yet. They chose to disregard his notification that we died prior to the explosion, something he got out before Lilith attacked, and we were the prime suspects for a while, but everything they found said he left on his own, so…" He spread his hands in a 'that's it' gesture.

Dean stared at him, processing briefly.

"So he's out there looking for us?" he asked as the thought dawned.

"Looks like," Sam told him. "Question is: how do we find him?"

#####

The Ghost Facers were humoring him, he could tell. Their body language was overly amused and even the twitchiest one of the group; apparently called Kenny; kept smirking when he thought no-one was looking. He had agreed that they could continue this meeting back at the Ghost Facers' headquarters – apparently somebody's parents' garage – but had to break off part way through the conversation as his phone rang.

He hadn't even got a greeting out when the person on the other end stated, "They've reappeared."

He glanced at the Ghost Facers, who were all staring at him, curiosity written plainly across their faces. "Tell me," he said, grabbing a pen and some paper and hurriedly scribbling down the address his contact gave him. "You know if they're likely to be there long?" he asked, but he was already speaking to a dial tone. The hunter didn't like owing the FBI agent who had been after arresting two of the more well known figures in hunting circles. Whether people loved them or loathed them, the consensus was the pair would take on jobs few others would dare get involved with, and that they were good people to have your back.

"Change of plans," he told the quartet. "I know some folks who will be able to tell us exactly what came out of that hole in the ground. Who's coming with me?"

#####

"Will you _please_ stop being idiots and just get in the goddamn car," Hendrickson growled at the youths, already resigned to having to deal with their flightiness. He fully understood where the other hunters who had encountered them were coming from now with the comments about shooting them probably being the best thing for everyone concerned.

They balked, looking between him and the red and white 1958 Plymouth Fury with horrified expressions. He rolled his eyes, mentally smirking to himself. Finally, something to make the idiots sit up and take notice. "It's just a car, you morons. Stephen King is just fiction. Christine? Ain't a real car."

The four looked at him, eyes disbelieving, and he sighed. Really, he didn't like threatening kids, but needs must. "Okay, kids, you can get in the car which might try to kill you, or you can stay out here with me and my nine mil. What's it to be?"

There was a thoughtful silence, and then Hendrickson had never seen a group of teens so eager to get into a vehicle before. They even made a valiant attempt to find seatbelts but, given that there weren't any in the back seat, they were fighting a losing battle. Even counting for the brief scuffle over the front seat between Ed and Harry, neatly circumvented by Maggie stepping around them in an obviously practiced move and closing and locking the door behind her, they were in and settled in less than a minute.

#####

Sam winced as Dean slammed the door behind them. He hadn't seen his brother quite this furious since his return from hell.

He began pacing, and Sam let him, reluctant to get near his brother while his temper was so high. He had tried that one time too many, and while Dean had lost all his scars when he was angelically resurrected, Sam still had all of his; little niggling reminders from when he had done something to push Dean just that last little bit too far, and this was one of those times.

Eventually, Dean snorted in exasperated fury. "What," he demanded, tone quietly reasonable, a sure sign that he was one wrong word from going off like a grenade, "Did you think you were playing at?"

Sam swallowed and opened his mouth to answer.

He was less than one wrong word from an explosion it turned out, because that question was apparently rhetorical. "You weren't damn well thinking!" he roared, not caring who else overheard the conversation. "That's what you were doing! She's a demon, Sam. A damn demon, and she's teaching you to use powers given to you by another damn demon. What good could possibly come of that?"

Sam thinned his lips. "Oh, I don't know?" he snapped. "That I can exorcise a demon without it getting away, and without harming the host if they're still alive? That I can tell who's possessed, even if there's no other way of telling?"

"Yeah. And what's next?" Dean continued. "Just one human life can save all these? And what about when that number rises? When all you're doing is paying and you're getting nothing back? When the return's not worth the outlay? What then, Sam? Or will you have stopped caring by then?"

"Dude, she's helping me control my powers. I don't even get headaches any more for the small stuff!"

Dean's eyes narrowed. "You ever stop to think that the headaches were a warning label? Something telling you not to do that?"

"But Dean-"

"No, Sammy, I really don't want to hear it. You don't even go to the bathroom without me from here on out. You got that? You, my boy, are _grounded_ until we manage to avert the apocalypse. Or you turn forty. Whichever's soonest."

Sam gaped briefly in stunned amazement. "Dean-" he tried, aware that he was sounding increasingly like a petulant fifteen year old girl who had been told that she could no longer meet up with her motorbike riding, much older boyfriend.

"Grounded," Dean ground out. "Do not make me cuff myself to your gigantor ass, because if that's what it takes to stop you meeting up with that skank, then I will."

"But-"

"Would you rather I told you to stop meeting her or have Castiel put a stop to it permanently, Sam? Because I'm rather thinking you'd prefer to be given a choice, rather than ripped to shreds by angels who think you've been called up to bat for the other side. Am I right?"

Sam swallowed. He hadn't even considered that. Or that the real reason for Dean's anger was actually his fear for Sam's safety; for his continued existence. He knew from past experience that Dean didn't deal well with fear, choosing to get angry or get even over showing he was actually scared of something.

He knew that Dean didn't deal well with losing family either, he thought darkly.

"All right," he agreed after a long moment. "All right. I won't meet Ruby any more. I promise."

"Or Christie," Dean told him and he rolled his eyes but nodded his agreement.

"Or Christie. If it means that much to you, I won't meet them. And I'll try not to use my powers." Dean looked about to protest, but Sam took his own turn to cut his brother off. "I'm not promising not to use them, Dean! If we're in a tight spot and it's use them or something bad happen to one of us, there's no way I'm not using them. But I promise not to use them other than that. Happy?"

Dean snorted. "No. But it's the best I'm going to get from you, so I'll take it. And I reserve the right to shoot Ruby in the head if I see her around you again. We clear?"


	8. Chapter 8

See part one for header details

#####

As Sam nodded, there was a loud, law enforcement style knock on the door, making it rattle in the frame. Dean and Sam eyed each other. They hadn't been that loud while they had been arguing, had they? Surely no-one in a place like this would call the cops for anything less than a loud argument which was punctuated with gunshots?

Drawing his .45, Dean ghosted over to the door and peered through the spy-hole, swearing quietly as he saw who was outside before waving Sam over so that he could look as well.

Sam gaped, but had managed to school his face by the time Dean pulled the door open. "Agent Hendrickson," he greeted, tone overly cheerful. "To what do we owe this – oh, fuck no."

Blinking, Sam peered round his brother and had to close his eyes, hoping that when he opened them again the Ghost Facers would prove to have just been a figment of his imagination.

Nope. They were still there.

The only consoling fact was that they looked just as stunned by this turn of events as Sam and Dean were. Dean fixed a glare on Hendrickson.

"Start talking," he demanded, face closing off.

Hendrickson smirked at him. "Think of it as revenge for having to chase your ass all over the contiguous forty-eight. Can we come in?"

Dean glanced at Sam, who shrugged in response before moving away from the door. Dean followed suit with bad grace, but allowed the five on the doorstep entry, Hendrickson closing the door firmly behind them with a bang that made Kenny flinch, shooting Dean an amused glance as he did so. Dean smirked in reply as Sam tried to be polite and offered to go get drinks.

Ed snorted. "Yeah, right," he muttered. "Like we'd accept anything off you guys, like, ever. Do you have any idea how much data you wiped with that little electromagnet trick of yours? You wiped the only copy of the pilot for our show! It was a sure thing, man, and you wiped it! Who does that?"

Sam covered his mouth, keeping a careful eye on Dean as Ed ranted on, with asides added by Harry mostly but occasionally by Maggie and Kenny too. He didn't really want to have to stop Dean killing the kid, but he knew that if the kid kept yammering on like that, Dean was going to make the attempt and they had enough trouble with being accused of murders they _hadn't _actually committed.

After a few moments, Dean appeared to shrug and tune the youths out as he turned to Hendrickson as the man asked in surprise, "How the heck did you get hold of an electromagnet that strong?"

Sam snorted. "He didn't get hold of it," he told the FBI agent. "He built it from scratch with stuff he found at a junkyard down the road."

Hendrickson's eyebrows lifted. "You built an electromagnet powerful enough to wipe a garage full of computer storage out of stuff you got from a junkyard?" he demanded, amused by Dean's idea of appropriate use of engineering skill.

Dean shrugged as he dropped himself onto the end of the nearest bed. "Not hard," he told the other man, keeping an eye on the kids with half an eye, making sure none of them strayed too near either of the duffel bags stowed between the two beds. It was one thing to be surrounded by annoying kids; quite another to be surrounded by annoying kids who had found the weaponry and were only one duffel bag away from finding the ammunition. "Soft iron for the core. Some copper wire for the coil. Just need a car battery to power it." He shrugged.

Hendrickson stared at him for a long moment, then said softly, "I've heard a load more of those crackpots predicting the apocalypse recently." He didn't appear to be overly surprised when Dean stiffened where he was sat, then suddenly shot to his feet, startling Ed into silence mid-sentence.

"Sammy," he snapped, "Look after the kids. Hendrickson and I are going to get some dinner for everyone."

Utterly missing the subtext, the Ghost Facers thought it was actually a genuine offer and began to shout out requests. Dean snorted. "It's diner food, not McDonalds, you idiots. You see golden arches on your way into town? It's burgers and fries unless any of you are vegetarian. Shut up Sammy," he added pre-emptively.

When no-one objected to the offer of burgers, Dean nodded. "Great. Let's go," he said, gesturing to Hendrickson. "Sammy, put the salt down. Kids, if a skanky brunette calling herself Christie or Ruby shows up, Sammy's not home and he wouldn't be allowed out to play even if he was. Got it?"

Sam glared at him, expression turning spectacularly bitchy. "Just get gone, man. Any idea what time we can expect you back?"

He received a bemused look from Dean and a shrug from Hendrickson as both men hurried out of the door, seemingly having spent far more time in the company of the Ghost Facers than they considered enough. He had to credit Hendrickson with more patience than Dean; after all he had just driven here with the four, who had settled in to bicker back and forth amongst themselves as soon as they realized that the people most likely to shoot them were leaving. He stared at the group as the door slammed. Maybe Hendrickson just had a longer attention span to concentrate on why shooting the four would be a bad idea?

#####

Dean smirked as he caught sight of Hendrickson's car. "Sweet ride," he commented brightly. "How long did it take you to convince those four crackpots that she wasn't going to try to kill them?"

Hendrickson shrugged. "I told them they could get in the car which might try to kill them, or they could stay outside with me and my nine millimeter. They were less worried about the car than they were about the crazy guy with the burn scars."

He caught Dean's guilty expression and huffed in irritation. "It wasn't your fault, man. You saved us from getting killed by Lilith's minions. You couldn't have predicted that the bitch herself would show up when you'd gone."

"Still feels like it though, man," Dean told him quietly. "Look. I. You should hear the whole story, right? If anyone deserves to hear it all, it's you. There's a diner down the street. We can get a coffee and when we're done we can bring food back for the Sasquatch and the Gremlins."

Shaking his head, Hendrickson groaned. "Don't let them hear you call them that. They'll either think it's great, or launch into a diatribe about why they aren't and couldn't possibly be."

Dean's eyes narrowed as he apparently tried to work out whether Hendrickson was pulling his leg or not. He shrugged after a moment and set off down the street, leaving Hendrickson to hurry to catch up. They were a little mud spattered by the time they reached the diner, the effect of passing cars, and the waitress took one look at them blowing on their hands and dropped two cups of coffee off at their table without having to be asked.

"So," Hendrickson asked after they had ordered and their food had arrived, "You were going to tell me the real story about how you wound up as a hunter, and what happened with Lilith?"

Dean nodded, shoveling in fries like he was never going to see them again. "Gotta start at the beginning," he said after swallowing.

"The fire?"

"Which one?" Dean asked, tone dry.

Hendrickson gestured for him to continue, allowing him to tell the story however he felt best.


	9. Chapter 9

See chapter one for header notes…

#####

Dean took a deep breath, steeling himself. "When Sammy was six months old," he began, "and I don't just mean about six months, I mean precisely, to the day, six months old; there was a fire in his nursery. I remember my dad handing Sammy to me and telling me to run outside and not look back. He joined us a few minutes later, but mom…mom didn't make it."

Hendrickson knew his eyes were wide. "So your mom died in a fire, just like Sam's girlfriend from college?" he asked.

With a nod, Dean continued. "Took dad a while to pull himself together enough, but eventually he figured out that it had been a demon that killed mom, and he put all his energy into tracking it. Sammy and I. We were kinda along for the ride, and I wouldn't have had it any other way, but Sammy was always marching to a different beat, y'know. Had this weird-ass fixation with schoolwork for some reason. I mean, don't get me wrong, nothin' wrong with school, but there are more important things in life, yeah?"

Snorting in amusement, unable to disagree with the other man despite having attained a master's degree himself, Hendrickson nodded. "Yeah, I get it. So little Sammy went off to college."

"Right," Dean conceded, "Except the fucker had been taller than me for the past two years."

That made Hendrickson laugh outright. "There are national monuments smaller than your brother," he allowed, starting to make inroads into his own meal.

Dean nodded in agreement before continuing. "Sam didn't stay in touch much. He'd text me at Christmas, but other than that, Dad had said if he wanted to go he should stay gone. And we were never big on Christmas anyway. But then dad disappeared in New Mexico. Just up and vanished in the middle of a hunt. I went to tell Sam, and he came with me to look for him. Didn't find him, but we did get rid of a Woman in White, and we found Dad's journal in his motel room.

"Took Sammy back to college – he had that law school interview the next day," and there was no mistaking that proud smirk, whatever Dean's own opinions about school were. "Guess you know what happened next, right?"

Hendrickson nodded shortly. "Yeah, man. Saw the report."

"Yeah," Dean said softly. "Anyway, turns out it was a demon. The same one that killed our mom. Same date as our mom died. Every last detail was exactly the same; right down to them both burning on the ceiling." He paused, motioning the waitress for a refill of coffee and remaining silent as she made her way to the table.

"There you go, hon. You too, sugar?" she asked Hendrickson, and he nodded.

Dean smiled politely. "Thanks, sweetheart," he told her as she moved on to the next table and he let her get out of earshot before continuing.

"So this demon, it had a few kids of its own. And one of those, Meg she called herself, really, really had it in for Sam. She met up with him on a bus when- Well, she met up with him on a bus, and he actually liked her. Kid hasn't looked at a girl since Jess was killed and the first one to catch his attention is a demon. Go figure." He shrugged; this was ancient history to him. "We exorcised her skanky ass, but then she managed to possess Sam. Used him to go hunt herself some hunters. Bobby and I, we got her out of him, but for a while there we couldn't poke our heads above the wall."

He raised his eyes to Hendrickson, apparently trying to gauge how he was reacting to the story. "Then dad died. Or rather, traded his life for mine. See, I was hurt bad in a fight with Azazel. We got away, were headed for a hospital and he... He possessed a truck driver. Used the truck to total the Impala. I was kinda stuck for a while. Some kinda outta body experience, except there was this reaper chick who kept trying to get me to go with her.

"Anyhow, Dad traded his life for mine. He died, I lived. And the demon was still out there."

Hendrickson cleared his throat gruffly. "We wondered," he said softly. "Your dad. He just vanished off the radar. We thought for a while he might just have gone off the grid – you gotta remember we were still working on the redneck paramilitary angle then – but it went on too long."

Dean nodded sadly. "Yeah, well, we got this gun, this colt. Made by Samuel Colt himself. It could kill pretty much anything; vampires, demons, whatever. And we tracked that son of a bitch down." He paused. "He... He took Sam. Stuck him in this village called Cold Oak with some other kids and made them fight to the death. Kid called Jake killed Sam. Sam spared his life, and the son of a bitch just stabbed him in the back." His tone was disbelieving, as though he couldn't even contemplate doing something like that.

"I..." His voice cracked for the first time. "I made a deal with a crossroads demon. Sammy's life and one year in return for my soul. Seemed a good deal at the time. Except when Sam shot Jake, and I killed Azazel, it brought Sam to the attention of Lilith. And you pretty much know the rest."

He looked exhausted, Hendrickson decided. Even with the rapid fire retelling, the story seemed to have drained Dean to the point where he looked ready to drink the coffee directly out of the pot the waitress was toting round.

"Mostly," Hendrickson agreed. "I heard you died. Some hunters in a bar. They thought they were being quiet."

Dean snorted. "Yeah. You probably bugged the damn table," he teased, then continued in a distant voice, "Yeah, I died. Hellhounds caught up to me. Nothing to be done.

"Next thing I know, I'm staring up at wood." He shuddered at the memory. "Had to dig my way out. Kinda grateful I'd been buried by hand, y'know. The dirt was less tightly packed."

Hendrickson swallowed, feeling the bile rise up in his gullet. "So whatever dragged you back didn't care that they'd just buried you alive?" he demanded in a low voice. "Just stuck you back in your body, job done?"

Dean shrugged. "I'm guessing angels don't sweat the details much," he mumbled after a moment.

Hendrickson sat back, unsure how to take that. He studied the other man intently, looking for some sign that he was joking, some sign he was pulling the newbie's leg – a bit like sending someone to an armoury to ask for a long stand – but Dean simply met his gaze levelly.

He nodded after a moment. "Guess that explains the damn handprint then," he said softly adding, when Dean gave him a startled look, "I can see it through your _jacket_, man."

#####

"What was that Chisel Chest and the fed were talking about? The Apocalypse?" Harry asked as soon as the sound of the Impala's engine had receded.

Sam stared at him. "Chisel Chest?" he asked, tone amused.

Harry's eyes narrowed as he apparently tried to work out his precise odds of survival if he attempted to force Sam to answer the question. Sam tucked his chin and resolutely did not laugh. Not even a little. He folded his arms, deliberately making his body language uncooperative, and watched as the smaller man made a rapid mental retreat.

"Didn't you know what that thing would do to our computers?" he demanded instead, and Sam rolled his eyes. Back to the safer subject which had resulted in nothing more than being ignored. He raised his brows at the younger man before sitting down on one of the beds near the bags of weapons and pulling out a whetstone and both of his favorite knives to clean and sharpen them.

It took a little while for the youths to catch on to what was causing the scraping noise, but as soon as they noticed, the effect was immediate. Silence abruptly descended on the room as four pairs of eyes became transfixed on Sam's hands as they moved the metal of the blades carefully and smoothly over the oiled surface of the stone.

Once he was quite certain he had everybody's attention, he stopped. "You guys going to behave like normal people now, rather than caffeinated idiots?" he asked pointedly.

Harry glared at him. "Are you going to tell us what came out of that grave, then?" he demanded.

"Yeah," Ed put in. "Let the professionals deal with it, you amateur."

Sam looked hard at the pair, wishing for all the world that he hadn't promised Dean that he wouldn't use his powers unless it was a matter of life or death. Only Maggie appeared to notice his intent and coughed, attempting to distract the boys.

It was like watching someone put a pebble in the way of an incoming tide.

As a last resort, Sam pulled out his cell phone and dialed, ignoring the Ghost Facers demands to know who he was calling and what it was about in favor of explaining the situation to Bobby, who politely didn't laugh until Sam said, "No, they're right here."

He waited a few moments.

"Bobby, it's really not that funny."

Bobby gave what seemed to be a final snort of laughter, blurted, "Call Ellen," and hung up on him. Just as the line cut off, he heard Bobby bursting back into peals of laughter. Resolutely ignoring the youths starting up another noisy discussion in the background, he steeled himself and dialed Ellen's number.

"Well well," she greeted after letting the phone ring for so long he had thought that she wasn't going to answer. "Sam Winchester. To what do I owe this honor?"

You could have cut glass with her tone and Sam had to forcibly restrain himself from fidgeting like a nervous child called to the principal's office. "Um, hey Ellen," he greeted, wincing at how hollow his tone sounded.

"Don't you 'Hey Ellen' me, young man. You're not too old for me to put you across my knee."

He smirked, even though she couldn't see him and, because he was well out of striking range, added daringly, "I might be a bit big though."

Ellen snorted, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. "You wanna tell me I had to find out the news from Jo, who heard it as gossip in a bar, rather than you bothering to pick up the phone?"

Frowning in confusion, he asked, "What news?"

The silence on the other end of the phone was disbelieving. "The news that you've been traveling with a green eyed blond. One who wasn't a chick, if you get my meaning?"

Sam cleared his throat nervously. "Um, yeah," he admitted after a moment. "I guess I have. Ah."

She circumvented his nervous stuttering, which the Ghost Facers were smirking about, by saying, "You can head on up to Bobby's and meet me there. If you're more than three days getting there, I will hunt you down. Do you understand me, young man?"

He swallowed hard. "Yes, ma'am," he agreed. "We'll meet you at Bobby's. We're a day and a half out."

"Good boy," Ellen told him, adding "I'll hold you to that," before she hung up, leaving him staring at the phone and wondering what, precisely, had just happened.


	10. Chapter 10

See part one for header details.

######

Sam almost leapt with joy as he heard the lock click open more than twenty minutes after his conversation with Ellen. Five more minutes and screw Dean's angel-given directive, he was going to use his powers to squish the group of youths. Well, maybe not Maggie, who had been rolling her eyes almost as much as he had, but that didn't alter the fact that he couldn't ever remember acting like this when he was their age, particularly given that they were also technically amateur Hunters.

"Hey," he greeted the pair as they entered, and decided not to tell Dean about the desire to put a permanent stop to Ed's and Harry's perpetual bickering. Dean looked stressed enough already, and he would find out soon enough anyway if they followed Ellen's directive.

Which he should probably tell Dean about.

"Uh-" he began, as Ed chimed in with, "Your brother agreed to go somewhere without checking if it was okay with you first. Just thought you should know."

Dean's stare as he looked at Ed was utterly blank. After a moment he shook himself and turned to Sam. "Bobby got something for us?"

Sam shook his head. "Ellen called. She ah… She heard about things and she says we're to meet her at Bobby's. And she said to bring these guys and she'll scare them straight or they'll die of her trying," he added somewhat maliciously with a glare at the four youths, even though Ellen had said nothing of the sort.

The Ghost Facers looked like they had just been savaged by a puppy, and Dean was smirking in amusement – right up until he the moment he realized exactly what Sam had said. It was like watching dawn rise as realization spread across Dean's face. "Oh, _shit_," he muttered, and Sam had to tamp down on the grin trying to escape. Ellen was the only person who could flat-out terrify Dean into behaving. Well, other than Missouri, but she was a special case.

Hendrickson looked between them. "Who's Ellen?" he asked. "Bobby's gotta be Robert Singer, right? But I don't remember reading about any Ellens in your files."

Sam stared at him for a long moment, before turning to Dean, wordlessly demanding to know how much Dean had told the former FBI agent. Dean widened his eyes infinitesimally in a classic, "Who, me?" gesture. At Sam's narrowed gaze, Dean rolled his own eyes and shook his head, clearly not about to share with the rest of the class and Sam folded his arms, raising one brow slightly as he cocked his head.

They were interrupted by Maggie's impatiently snapped, "Would you two please just stop with the eye-sex already? We know that bit about you being brothers is a lie, okay, and you're in public anyway?"

A stunned silence fell across the room as all the males turned to stare at her in a mix of surprised horror and stunned amusement. "_What?_" Harry demanded, the only one who managed to speak. Even Dean, one of those who had been struck dumb with amused surprise rather than horror, was staring at her with round eyes, not apparently not quite believing that she had said that.

Hendrickson recovered from his surprise fastest, giving a huge whoop of laughter. "They really _are_ brothers," he eventually managed to force out between guffaws, eyes tearing up with laughter.

Maggie's face went perfectly, almost unnaturally blank for all of a second, before she blurted out, "Well, it'd still be really hot! Even if they are great big jerks!" As her ears caught up with her mouth, she flushed a deep red and sank onto the end of the nearest bed, hiding her face in her hands in abject mortification.

Sam was certain his own face must be as red as Maggie's as Dean joined in Hendrickson's laughter and the male Ghost Facers looked for somewhere to hide out of the initial line of fire.

As Dean sagged against the wall next to the door holding his midriff and Hendrickson carefully lined himself up with one of the rickety looking chairs before letting his knees fold up on him, Sam saw red. "Shut up, jerk," he snapped at Dean surprising the youths into open-mouthed silence before they had even begun to interrupt. "You're totally the bitch in this relationship."

Faster than Sam had expected, Dean was by his side, laughter stopped like someone had flicked a switch, to administer a sharp slap to the back of Sam's head. "Grounded," he growled. "For life."

Sam raised an eyebrow at his brother. "I thought I was grounded until the apocalypse was averted?" he reminded testily.

Dean snorted in a distinct lack of amusement, expression souring noticeably. "Yeah. Because then? I'm going to kill you."

"You and what army?" Sam demanded, and it was official. Despite all the debating skills he had learned at college as a preparation for going into law; despite his time spent on the debate team to hone those self same skills; when he was arguing with his brother he degenerated back into a twelve year old.

"Bitch."

"Jerk!"

"Hey!"

Both Winchesters turned to look at Ed in surprise. "What?" Dean asked after a moment.

Ed floundered a moment, then snapped, "How the hell do you amateurs manage to hunt ghosts if you argue like you're five the whole time?"

Hendrickson's laughter cut off like someone had pressed stop on a recording and even the other three Ghost Facers fell silent as they waited apprehensively for the answer.

Dean raised his brows mildly at Ed, who backed away nervously at the almost pleasant expression on the older man's face. "Amateurs?" Dean asked, sounding almost amused. Victor found himself automatically comparing the elder brother to a large cat toying with its next meal. If Dean had had a tail, the end would have been twitching in excitement. He kept expecting the older brother to gather himself up to spring.

Ed continued to back away.

Evidently the boy had a fully developed sense of self preservation, even if he didn't often make use of it.

Ed backed into the wall to the side of the doorway he had apparently been aiming for. Not that well developed maybe. If he was serious about surviving, he would have made the doorway.

Expression not changing, Dean closed the distance, while Victor carefully found something to occupy himself. Sam settled back against the closest wall to watch the show.

When he next spoke, Dean's voice was careful and measured. "When I was eight," he said in a soft, level tone, all the more threatening for its mildness, "my father gave me my first gun, which he taught me to shoot with. He taught me to care for it. And then, when I was nine, he taught me to hunt with it. I hunted my first ghost with him that year. He let me drop the match into the grave for keeping the ghost off him while he was digging the grave up. Tell me Ed," and here his voice dropped to a low, threatening rumble, pressing into Ed's personal space and speaking almost directly into his ear, "who the hell is the amateur here?"

The moment stretched as Ed – as all the Ghost Facers – realized that they may have just let go of the tail of the tiger they had been poking and try as he might, Victor couldn't look away from the frozen tableau, couldn't not watch what was going to happen next. Ed looked like he might lose bladder control at any second as he seemed to suddenly realize just how much bigger than him the oldest Winchester was – and that if one of them found cause to object to him physically, there would be a second, larger one along in a moment.

In the end it was Sam who shattered the tension by clearing his throat, rocking back and forth and scuffing his toes on the dirt-brown carpet – and Victor saw exactly how law enforcement had always managed to dismiss the younger brother as mostly harmless, just following big brother's lead, despite his sheer size. "Dean, you and dad always told me you were twelve when you went on your first hunt."

Dean, who seconds previously had looked ready to commit multiple homicide with great cheer and enthusiasm, blinked. "Dude! Do you have some kinda recording device in your head? And that was to stop you from tryin' ta help with the black dog in Wichita when you were ten." He snorted, shaking his head in amusement. "Pack the car, bitch. Kids, food."


	11. Chapter 11

See part one for header details

I'll be away for the weekend, so posting shall re-commence on Monday.

#####

Victor didn't recognize the two women on the porch of the slightly worn looking house in the middle of Singer's Junkyard, but he would bet good money that the Winchesters did. The way they had pulled up and were still sitting in the Impala ten minutes later was probably the best clue.

He gave them five more minutes, before ordering the Ghost Facers out of the car. Not bothering to lock up, he mooched over to the Impala, noting the way the women had started to look more guarded when they saw him.

He sighed, realizing they probably remembered him from when he had been carrying out a manhunt for the brothers. He thought he recognized them both, and had a vague recollection of an out of the way bar. The brothers had gone completely off the grid after his visit there, he realized abruptly.

Dismissing the two women for the moment, despite the fact that both were quite probably armed to the teeth, he snapped at the four youths to stay near the car and leaned down to rap on the driver's side window of the Impala, making Dean startle in surprise. With a scowl, he swung the door open and it was only the rapid step Victor took sideways towards the back of the car that prevented him from being knocked onto his ass in the mud. He smiled mildly at Dean, catching sight of the women's shocked faces as the older brother glared at him then stalked towards the porch.

Sam leaned on the roof of the car, palms flat on the gleaming black surface. "We should wait here," he murmured.

Victor nodded. He had caught the tension in the air as well, and was quite certain that while his presence was contributing to it, Sam was also part of the problem, particularly from the wary way the young blonde woman was eyeing him.

Movement at his side caught his attention and he looked across to see Maggie fidgeting next to him. "What's going on?" she asked him softly, voice a little worried. His glance back at her brother and friends revealed that they looked completely unconcerned and, from the snatches of conversation he could hear, appeared to be arguing about the merits of two different actresses who had played someone called Buffy. He rolled his eyes, turning back in time to see the woman who had to be Ellen fling Holy Water on Dean, whose expression was that of a cat which had met with an unexpected rainstorm, but other than that he appeared to have restrained himself from reacting.

When she dropped the flask and hauled him close to wrap her arms around him, Victor decided it was safe enough to start to approach. He was halfway there, well away from any cover, when an older man with a salt and pepper beard and a ball cap emerged from the house, shotgun held ready. Victor was willing to bet this one wasn't loaded with rock salt. He extended his hands to the sides, palms up, as the young blonde moved to his side and gave him a pat down. She missed both the blades down the back of his boots, and the small, two-shot pistol he had taken to keeping in a wrist holster after catching a rerun of the Magnificent Seven TV show in one of the seedy motels he had stopped at in the previous three months.

He caught the woman's flinch as Sam stepped closer and quietly informed her, "He's ok." It might have just been the sheer size of the young man, but if the two women knew Dean, there was no way they hadn't ever met Sam. She fixed Sam with a glare, stuck the last of the confiscated weapons into the knapsack she had brought with her and pointedly turned her back to stalk back to the porch, an obvious 'I'm not scared of you,' gesture if ever Victor had seen one.

She reported back to Bobby, who nodded before gesturing that Victor could approach with the lowering of the business end of the shotgun. Not that he put it up at all, just relaxed his guard infinitesimally. Victor kept his hands visible as he approached, climbing the steps to nearly the top before turning to face Sam and sitting down.

With an amused look shot in the young woman's direction, he pointedly pulled up his sleeve and unfastened the wrist holster, throwing the whole rig to Sam, before removing the knives from his boots and handing them off to the older man with the shotgun, who had to be Singer.

The man got the point and nodded, finally putting up the gun and returning the knives to Victor with a pointed glance at the young woman, who flushed scarlet and hurried inside. "Got yourself some tag-alongs?" he asked Victor, gesturing at the four youths now stood in a sort of huddle near the bright red and white car sticking out like a sore thumb in the middle of the junk yard.

Victor shrugged. "They found a grave," he told the man blandly. "Were speculating on whether or not Buffy was real. I thought they could use a little help finding the straight and narrow."

Sam snorted. "They're that group of kids we told you about, Bobby. The Ghost Facers?"

Bobby looked entirely nonplussed. "Those idjits?" he asked mildly, lip twitching in amusement.

Victor's eyes narrowed as he regarded Bobby. "What're you thinking?" he asked, then risked a glance at the four. They saw him looking and hurried over. Or at least Ed and Harry did. Maggie informed them that Victor had told them to wait by the car and Kenny objected loudly that there were guns over there. Victor mentally chalked Kenny up as the brightest of the three boys.

Bobby sighted. "Ya'd better come inside then," he grumbled. "You," he added, throwing a set of keys at Sam, along with a look which spoke volumes, "Can go do a grocery run. And take Rumsfeld with ya!" he added as an afterthought as Sam shot him a resigned look and trudged away.

Once they heard an engine start up just out of sight around the corner, Bobby looked Victor up and down. "Suppose you'd better come in then," he commented, leading his way into the house.

#####

Jo had apparently offered the youths drinks by the time Bobby led the former FBI agent into the kitchen. He made sure the door to his library was locked, even if it was only flimsy defense, before turning to the group. "So," he said after a long moment in which he and the Ghost Facers studied each other, "You want to hunt ghosts, huh? And you want to do it by disregarding the experience of people who have been doing it for longer than you've been alive, because you're _scientists_?"

"Alleged scientists," Victor muttered from behind a hand, just loud enough for Bobby to hear.

Jo slammed her mug down on the counter top. "Wait, these are the guys who nearly got Mac Lewis killed by that poltergeist over in Burnt Corn?" she demanded, eyes flashing. She looked for all the world like she was wishing she had put laxatives in their drinks. Or maybe arsenic. "I mean, I thought it was really funny when I heard that someone had nearly got Sam killed. Well," she allowed as Bobby gave her a level stare, "Maybe not funny, but poetic justice. But it's not _just _Sam they nearly got killed, it's probably Dean as well, even though he did a good enough job of that on his own anyway, and it's Mac, and there's probably others too! Are you kids _stupid_?"

"Hey!" Ed protested, "You're no older than us! You don't get to call us kids!"

Victor snorted. "Mr. Zeddmore, if the reference to your age is the only thing you're going to object about in that statement, your priorities are wrong. You nearly got a man killed. In fact, from the sound of things, you've nearly got more than one man killed. Maybe you should be worrying about that instead."

It was Harry who protested. "If those amateurs didn't bring along the proper equipment, we're not responsible for that."

With a bemused glance in Bobby's direction to ask permission, Victor stepped towards them. He was gratified to note that Maggie and Kenny were at least looking a little shame-faced. "Didn't you already have this discussion with Dean?" he asked them dryly.

Color flared along Ed's cheeks as the comment hit home. "We're studying them to record them for future generations!" he snapped.

"Yeah," Bobby drawled. "You're real heroes. You ain't stopped to think that the ones which come to folks' attention are the dangerous ones, the ones that need takin' out. And ya don't stop to think it might not be a ghost at all; ya jus' blunder on in an' ta hell with anyone else who's there already on the job! Ya got your own friend killed at the Winchester place. Who else do ya want ta kill?"

The four youths exchanged suddenly meek glances, and it was Maggie who stepped forward. "Look, I'm not speaking for my brother, or the other two, but I'm sorry, okay. We, well, we didn't think. And it's not like anyone tells you about a community of people who hunt the supernatural at careers fairs. And I know we've had a couple of run-ins with them, but we really didn't know what these guys were doing with all the salt and stuff. And yeah, Dean and Sam showed us what to do that time, but I don't even think I realized what half the stuff they were doing was, and then they wiped the recording with that thing – and all my data from the meters we put around the place – and they disappeared before we could get them to tell us more about it!"

Bobby snorted. "Yeah, kid, they do that. Ya wanna learn?" he asked.

There was another exchange of glances then Maggie, currently apparently the spokesperson for the four, nodded. "Yeah. We do."

Another nod, less of agreement than of decision that they would be permitted to remain breathing while they did so. "Right. You listen to him," he said as he pointed at Victor, "About his first encounter with the supernatural, and then you tell me if you still want to be Hunters. The first one you realized was an encounter with the supernatural," he clarified as Victor looked about to ask. "Not the one where you mistook a shapeshifter for a bank teller."


	12. Chapter 12

See part one for header notes.

#####

Victor shot Bobby a less than amused look, but sighed. "Alright. My first encounter. You guys know I used to be an FBI agent, right? Well, I was assigned to a serial killer case; the Winchester case. There'd be a series of deaths, or bad things happen to people, then the brothers would show up and when they moved on, the problems would stop. Without knowledge of the supernatural, the case was profiled like any other case where the suspects keep up and leaving and I was the person whose desk it landed on.

"Finally got a tip off from an anonymous source," and here Bobby growled something that sounded suspiciously like 'Bela', "and we arrested them."

He paused. "I don't remember much after we got them in a cell and I called my boss. In fact, the next thing I remember is coming back to myself with Sam reading Latin over me. An exorcism. He said I had been possessed. I had shot the sheriff while the demon had control."

"Weren't you, son," Bobby butted in. "Never forget that whatever that thing did, it wasn't you."

Victor's lips thinned and he nodded, but he knew that it wouldn't stop his stomach souring every time he thought about it, thought about how it had felt to pull the trigger, wouldn't stop the sick sense of guilt he felt when he remembered. Dean had told him the exact same thing, though not in so many words at the time, and it hadn't helped much then, either. He gathered himself and forged on.

"A demon called Lilith was hunting Sam. They wouldn't tell me why. But she sent a horde of demons to attack the police station, and they surrounded us. In the end, the boys came up with a plan – and can I just say, Bobby, someone needs to censor what films those two watch, because they made references to some Keanu Reaves movie which I never want to hear about again in my life."

"Don't knock Constantine!" Ed protested loudly, then jerked and yelped as Maggie pinched his arm hard in chastisement.

"They made Nancy and the Deputy get up on the roof, and then we let the demons in. And when we'd let them in, and Nancy and Amici had sealed the doors and windows with salt from the outside, I set off a recorded exorcism. We got all but one, evidently, because after the boys had gone, this cute kid shows up." He glanced briefly at Bobby, who gestured for him to go on.

"It was Lilith."

He cleared his throat, amazed at how hoarse it had gotten in the span of three short words. "She made it look like a gas explosion had taken out the police station. She tortured the three of us, me and Nancy and Amici, and she really didn't care if we lived or died. She didn't want information. She just wanted to hurt us because we'd helped Sam. Nancy and Amici did die. I understand that Lilith raised Nancy's ghost to use against the boys," he finished.

He was about to speak when he heard the sound of a car pulling up outside. It wasn't the same sound as Bobby's truck, but Bobby seemed to know it, so he relaxed slightly, but the low murmur of conversation from the porch cut off.

The next thing he heard was the sound of a car door closing and then there was a sudden shriek of, "Dean Winchester, you put me down, right now!"

#####

Dean moved carefully towards Bobby's porch, peripherally aware of Jo but not about to take his eyes off Ellen to look at her. Jo might be hunting on her own now, but Ellen wouldn't even hesitate before wasting him if she thought he was going to be a danger to her daughter. He wasn't about to risk anything that might be interpreted by Ellen as interest in her daughter.

He stopped in front of the woman, catching a glimpse of Bobby behind the screen of the door, shotgun in hand and almost rolled his eyes, suppressing the urge to ask if his friends could come over to play. He supposed 'friends' was stretching it a bit.

Catching Ellen's intent as she reached for her pocket, he forced himself to stand still as she withdrew a flask and threw its contents over him. He glared; hadn't Bobby explained they'd been through this? Maybe Ellen was one of those people who had to piss on the electric fence for themselves; but he was completely unprepared for Ellen's next action as she grabbed his jacket and hauled him into her arms, hugging him with bruising force.

Feeling the slight tremor running through her, he relented. He lifted his arms and wrapped them round her shoulders, dropping his cheek to rest on the top of her head; and why had he never noticed how short Ellen was before? How come he always saw her as a momma-bear of a woman when she only reached his chin?

He left the rest of the group to their own devices as he let Ellen hold on until she had regained her equilibrium, then pushed her away slightly, hands on her shoulders. "So…" he asked, "Uh… How're you doin'?"

Ellen gave him a watery smile. "Better," she told him. "Much better for seeing you." She pulled away, going to lean on the railing. "There's been some concern in the community about Sam since you…"

"Since I died. You can say it, Ellen. And yeah. He went a little off the rails while I was…" he relented at Ellen's expression. "While I was away," he finished the sentence with a sigh. "But we're working on it." He glanced up as briefly as Sam bounded back down the steps and headed for Bobby's truck, hearing the slam of the screen door behind him as everyone else headed into the house.

"Working on it?" she asked. "Dean, people are saying – other _hunters­_ – are saying that Sam's been seen with a demon. There's been talk of hunting _him_, do you understand? And now you're back, there's going to be talk about what lengths he went to in order to _get_ you back."

Dean snorted, dropping his gaze. "Yeah, well, I don't know what he did, but it wasn't him who brought me back," he told her, voice low. "_Sammy_ would have made sure I didn't have to dig my way out of my own damn grave."

He heard a quiet gasp and when he looked up, Ellen had both hands over her mouth, looking as horrified as he had ever seen the practical, no-nonsense woman. "Yeah, well, I got out, okay. I got out and I got here and Bobby helped me find Sam and I've put a stop to his little meetings with that bitch Ruby." He paused briefly. "If she even is Ruby," he added. He frowned thoughtfully, but shook his head after a moment, vowing to ask Castiel about her later, if he remembered when the angel chose to show up.

Ellen gave him an odd look. "Who's Ruby?" she asked, straightening, but Dean shook his head, waving off the question.

"Doesn't matter," he told her, voice dark. "She shows up again, I'll kill her myself."

His answer made Ellen pause briefly. "She's the demon then," she commented with a nod, filing the information away. "You gonna tell me what she looks like so I can warn people to be on the lookout?"

Dean considered, then shrugged. "Sure. Why not. Brunette, 'bout Jo's height. Kinda whiny. Which makes me think she's not the same one who showed Bobby how to forge bullets for the colt. Goes by the name of Christie."

Ellen went pale.

"What?" he demanded, stepping closer. "Ellen? You okay?"

She waved him off with a muttered, "Damnit!" She staggered away from him, apparently wanting a little distance and he let her, backing up to the wall. After a long moment, she appeared to gather herself. "Okay, so the insurance on the bar finally paid up. Me'n Jo got a new place a county over, and with Jo hunting more, I hired some help. Short. Brunette. Goes by the name of Christie. And she drank off a shot laced with Holy Water like it was nothing."

Really, Dean felt he should have been more surprised than he actually was. He nodded in acceptance. "She do anything other than wait tables?" he asked.

Ellen shook her head. "Waits tables. I clean down at the end of the evening, she goes home. She's only there when Jo isn't."

"Okay," said Dean, "Here's what you're going to do. Call a hunter you trust, who has nothing to do with me and Sam, someone Sam and I have never met, never associated with, and ask them if they could be a relative in need of a place to stay. You tell her that she's been great, but that you'll have to let her go because you can't afford to pay her and your cousin or whatever. Very sorry, yadda, maybe when your cousin has sorted themselves out she could come back."

Ellen snorted. "Most Hunters you've never met hate your guts, Dean," she told him, and expression of surprise crossing her face when he smiled.

"Yeah, well, must be the Winchester charm," he told her.

She folded her arms with a laugh. "It's the Winchester something, alright," she told him, then sighed. "Okay," she agreed, "We'll try it." She pulled him back into her arms, as though assuring herself that he was still alive, still really here, not even moving when an unfamiliar engine moved into hearing. "It's just Diana," she told him, forestalling him from going for the gun in his waistband.

"Diana?" he asked, suspicion dawning on him. "You brought Diana Ballard here?" he demanded, pulling away.

She smiled up at him. "Been a hunter for six months, Dean. Well, officially she's a PI. After she shot her partner, no-one else in the precinct would work with her. Especially because you and Sam escaped."

Dean swallowed. "Is she mad?" he asked, wishing that hadn't come out sounding quite like a small child who had broken his father's favorite coffee mug. Ellen cuffed him, hard.

"She's not mad at you," she snapped, and then relented slightly. "She saw what you'd been hunting and decided to do something about it," she allowed. "She's a PI mainly, but she hunts on the side. Got a black dog near Albany a few weeks ago." She grabbed him by the wrist and towed him down to greet the silver Prius which rolled to a stop just back from the monstrosity Victor drove, dubbed 'Christine' by the Ghost Facers to Victor's seeming eternal amusement. Dean just couldn't believe the guy was driving something in those colors.

Diana's reaction was pretty similar to Ellen's, and Dean had just about had enough of these chick flick moments, so he put a stop to it, hoisting Diana up over his shoulder in a fireman's carry and heading for the house in search of coffee. "Dean Winchester," Diana yelled in surprise from somewhere level with the center of his back, "You put me down, right now!"

Ellen, trailing behind them, was laughing too hard to rescue her.


	13. Chapter 13

See part one for header details.

#####

Victor was first to the door, pulling up short as he almost collided with a smirking Dean. Dean neatly side-stepped him, dumping the kicking woman back on her feet and holding her in place by looping his arm round her shoulders.

"Victor!" he exclaimed, glee evident in every line of his body. "I'd like you to meet my good friend Diana Ballard. Diana, this is Victor Hendrickson. You've probably spoken to him. He would have been the guy insisting Sammy and I were bad guys and that you should turn us in."

He looked down, meeting an amused gaze. Evidently she did remember their conversation. She raised her brows in challenge.

"Detective Ballard," he greeted after a moment's panicked thought, "I have realized, upon reflection, that I was judging the Winchesters without having sufficient data, and may have been out of line with my questions." He risked a glance up at Dean's face. The other man was looking at him serenely, but Ellen was trying hard not to laugh behind his shoulder. "Can I get you a cup of coffee?"

With a wry smile, Diana accepted his proffered arm and allowed him to lead her into the house, Dean's muttered, amused sounding, "Sucker," echoing in his ears.

#####

Sitting around, waiting for Sam to get back from town with supplies sucked ass, Dean decided. The Ghost Facers were possibly the most annoying group of kids he had ever met – and he included in that the group that Sammy had hung around with in his final year of High School, so that was really saying something. Finally, at long, long last he detected the sound of Bobby's truck approaching and unearthed himself from Bobby's library, stalking out past everyone in the kitchen – and he really meant _everyone_. He hadn't known there was enough space at Bobby's for more than a small handful of people – and going to help his brother cart stuff from the pick-up to the house.

Sam took one look at his face and apparently decided that commenting would be hazardous to his health, because he simply handed Dean a sack of dog food and didn't say a word beyond, "Under the stairs," and turned back to grab the groceries from the front seat while Rumsfeld leapt from the flatbed.

When Dean hadn't moved by the time he turned back, Sam frowned at him. "What?" he asked.

Dean shook his head. "Just enjoying the quiet," he admitted. "How Hendrickson didn't kill them on the way here I have no clue."

Sam snorted in amusement. "Okay, tough guy," he teased. "I won't tell anyone you got scared off by four kids if you come indoors at dinner time rather than hiding out in the Impala. Deal?"

Grinning gratefully, Dean headed for his baby, popping the hood and getting to work.

He was so engrossed that he didn't notice Hendrickson's approach until the other man spoke, then jumped in surprise, banging his head on the underside of the hood. Cursing under his breath, checking for blood and blinking the tears out of his eyes, he straightened up. When his hand came away blood free, he shook his head to try and clear the ringing in his ears and squinted at the former agent.

"What?" he demanded, noticing Hendrickson's smirk.

Hendrickson shook his head. "Was wondering if you could give me a few pointers?" he asked, gesturing at the red and white Plymouth.

Dean looked from him to the car, then back again. "Sure," he said after a long moment. "Why not? And it keeps you away from the kids, too, how 'bout that?"

That drew a grin from Hendrickson. "Yeah, how 'bout that," he agreed. "I'm kinda hoping when we go back in there, Bobby will have discovered they're some sort of new demon and exorcised them."

Snorting in reply, Dean shook his head. "We couldn't get that lucky. The kid who's always fiddling with the video camera's usually okay," he admitted after a beat. "And Maggie's a good kid. Shame about her brother, and she's got a lousy taste in guys, but I figure Ellen can beat that out of her."

"Man," Hendrickson crowed, "You really never quit."

Dean gestured at the Plymouth. "Pop the hood," he commanded. "Let's see what she's got. And Maggie's a good kid, but she's just that. A kid. It's bad enough you guys thinking I'm a serial killer, okay?"

Hendrickson's eyebrows tried to climb to his hairline, but he leaned in through the window and pulled the lever, Dean hauling the hood up and pulling the support strut into place. He waited for Hendrickson to return to his side before leaning over and carefully picking over the big block V8 engine, pointing out various parts to Hendrickson and occasionally reaching in to check something. Hendrickson watched, fascinated, as the younger man's long fingered hands stroked over the engine as tenderly as someone caressing a lover, and had to smile. Stood to reason Dean Winchester would be better with cars than people.

"Okay," he finished, "It's a good engine, but it needs some TLC. She's older than the both of us; hell, if she's not older than Bobby, she's not far off, and that engine block's an original Chrysler B. Like I said, a good engine. So I'm guessing you can check oil, check the radiator has enough coolant? They must teach that in Agent-school, surely?" He shot Hendrickson a questioning look, taking in the other man's bemused expression, frowning as Hendrickson jerked in surprise and lifted his head to look over Dean's shoulder.

"What the hell is that?" he demanded.

Dean followed his gaze, reaching for his pistol, but stopped as he recognized the figure walking towards them. He sighed, resigned to these visits. "That," he said softly, resignedly, "is Castiel," then turned back to the car.

#####

Hendrickson had to look away from the bright figure walking towards them. Yes, he decided, he could quite believe that this being had left that mark on Dean's shoulder. What he wasn't quite able to believe was the way Dean had acknowledged the figure's presence briefly, and then turned away as though the angel meant nothing.

"Dean, we must talk," the angel said softly once he – Hendrickson wasn't certain, but that was how Dean had referred to Castiel, so it would do for now – was close enough to be heard. Hendrickson wheezed slightly. He was finding it difficult to breathe in the presence, but Dean didn't seem to be having a problem, and Hendrickson didn't know why or how that could be so, when all he wanted to do was let his legs fold up and kneel.

"Yeah?" Dean drawled, voice almost bored. "What is it this time?"

Castiel moved around to stand next to Dean, on the other side to Hendrickson and leaned over to speak almost directly into his ear. Dean didn't straighten up, but his shoulders went utterly rigid, fingers getting a white knuckled grip on the top of the radiator.

"Later," he growled in reply. "Just... Later."

The being gave what Hendrickson assumed to be a nod, then stepped away and headed back in the direction from which it had approached. Hendrickson suddenly found he could breathe again and let himself sag against the side of the car.

"You okay?" Dean asked after a moment.

Hendrickson nodded. "Man, how can you not be affected by that?" he asked, knowing he must look slightly stunned.

Dean shook his head. "Just lucky, I guess," he muttered, tone suggesting that he thought he was exactly the opposite. "We doing this?" he continued, gesturing at the engine.

Blinking in surprise, Hendrickson eventually nodded, leaning back in. "Just one last question, then. What did he want?"

Clamping his lips into a tight line, Dean huffed through his nose. "Same thing he always wants," he muttered, voice flat. "So," he continued, voice cracking slightly on the first word, "this engine has a bore of four point oh six two five inches. It can generate three hundred and five brake horsepower, and if you look after her right, she will outrun anything on the road except gas stations."

Resigning himself to never finding out what the angel had said to Dean, Hendrickson leaned in and let Dean tell him about himself through the car. As ways of learning about suspects, it wasn't the worst method he had ever used.


	14. Chapter 14

See part one for header notes.

#####

Dean sighed as he took a swig of his beer. There were too many people here, too many people involved in this now, and he was starting to feel antsy. He knew Sam wouldn't understand, Sam with his four years of experience living in a city, at college, surrounded constantly by other people, but it made Dean second guess himself. He had to try to gauge everyone's reactions and with this many people, he just couldn't do it. The time spent with Hendrickson and his car earlier had helped; beautiful car, shame about the association with Stephen King, but bad things happened to good people the whole time; but he still had to come back to the house for meals, and it just felt full. Too full. It made the space between his shoulder blades itch.

The nature of the silence behind him changed and he dropped his head in resignation. "Evening Castiel," he said softly, not bothering to turn. "Come to tell me this is my crusade? That I don't get to ask for help?"

Castiel moved up next to him, leaning on the porch rail next to Dean and letting the silence stretch. After a long moment, he straightened. "We all get to ask for help, Dean," he said softly. "Even angels." He paused, canting his head slightly, the moon glinting oddly off eyes that were both far too human and nothing close to human.

"I came to say," He continued, "that you've succeeded in separating your brother from the demon for now, but you must ensure that he does not slip back into his old ways. You must make sure she does not try to 'help' him again."

Dean snorted, throwing the angel a slightly frustrated look as he finished off the remnants of his beer. "I get it. Demon powers bad. He's not going to do it again, even if I have to break out the handcuffs."

Castiel inclined his head in assent. "See that he doesn't." He frowned abruptly, face taking on a cast of utter confusion. "Your friend," he asked softly, "Victor Hendrickson. How did he see me? I had not intended to approach then, but he saw me and then I had no choice."

About to make a flippant comment, Dean caught the angel's expression and relented. "He was tortured by Lilith. I don't know why that would make him able to see you, but she didn't even stick around to see if they lived or died. She tortured Victor and the deputy and Nancy, who didn't even…" He trailed off. "I liked 'em, okay? They were thrown in the supernatural deep end and they didn't complain; they just did it. And now two of 'em are dead and Victor gave up pretty much his entire life to become a hunter, and it's because of me and Sam that he had to." Dean cut off as he realized he was close to shouting and waking the entire house. "I mean, you probably already know all this crap, but you don't _know_," he tried to clarify. "You weren't there, you didn't fight with them."

Castiel nodded briefly, then startled Dean by laying a hand on his shoulder, the gesture made with intent to offer support rather than to push him into doing something. Dean stared at him, eyes wide and startled, until he removed the hand with a sad half smile.

"You are more comfortable discussing what I will ask you to do next, rather than accepting comfort from me," he murmured, not stepping back out of Dean's personal space. When it came to his own personal angel on his shoulder, Dean felt that several square miles of personal space might not be enough. "Very well," Castiel allowed. "Your friend, Diana Ballard, she is on the right track, but she will need help. She can't go far enough to stop it on her own. Lilith needs the blood and life of a dragon for opening the next seal, and there is only one true dragon remaining in this country."

Dean nodded as he took a careful step away from Castiel and settled against the rail again. He turned back to ask Castiel what he meant about dragons, but the angel had gone, disappearing as silently as he had appeared, and Dean once again felt a guilty rush of relief.

He jerked in surprise as an open bottle of beer appeared in his line of sight and spun, only to relax as he recognized Diana.

She smiled at him as he took the beer and leaned back again, trying to look for all the world like he hadn't almost gone for the gun which he kept holstered at the small of his back, no matter that he was in a "safe" place and no matter that it was the middle of the night. He might trust Bobby to ward properly, but he most certainly didn't trust the ghosties and ghoulies and long-leggity beasties to play by the rules.

"Penny for your thoughts?" she offered him as he continued to stare out over the junk yard.

He shot her a rueful grin and shook his head. "Don't think they're worth that much," he demurred softly.

She snorted inelegantly. "Don't you give me that crap, Dean Winchester. You're a smart kid. Might not have gone to college like your brother, but the way I hear Ellen tell it, you're the go-to guy 'round here for anything electronic, like Ash was the guy for computers."

Dean shook his head. "Ellen exaggerates."

Diana outright laughed at that. "So she's exaggerating when she says she'd trust you to watch her back but not her daughter?"

He ducked his head, cursing the fair skin which freckled rather than tanned, and which showed off every blush. Not that there was much these days that would make him blush. Not that he was going to admit that to Diana.

"I guess not," she commented, offering the bottle more emphatically and he took it after a long moment. "Ellen tell you how I ended up here?" she asked.

Dean shook his head. "Nah, not in detail. Too busy alternating between feeding me and Sammy and warning me off Jo. Something about becoming a PI?"

She nodded. "It was a few weeks after Pete – well, after I shot Pete. No one wanted to be partnered with me, and there was this federal ass phoning me every five minutes to find out if you had contacted me again. Them warning the new guys from the Academy that I had shot my partner was the final straw. IA had ruled it a fair shooting, and they had found evidence that tied him to the three deaths we knew about and others besides, but he was well liked down at the precinct, whatever IA said, and I was stuck behind a desk because everyone wanted to believe that I'd had something to do with it, beyond actually pulling the trigger."

"Well that sucks," Dean agreed. The look she shot him was partly amused, partly grateful.

"Anyway," she continued, "I spoke to the captain. He agreed that in return for a good recommendation, I'd find myself a new patch. I moved out to Vegas, he gave me a recommendation letter for the PD so that I could get my PI license and I've been there ever since."

Dean snorted, shaking his head. "You manage to shake off the ass from the FBI?" he asked, humor evident in his tone and Diana laughed.

"For a while," she allowed. "He seems to have reappeared again. He's changed his tune a bit though." She hesitated. "What happened about that?"

Taking a deep breath, Dean rubbed his hand over his face. "Okay," he began. "There was this woman called Bela Talbot. She looked for supernatural artifacts, but not to use for their intended purpose like a hunter would; she sold them to the highest bidder. We came across her about a year ago, and she nearly got Sammy killed.

"She stole the Colt. Don't know if you've heard the story? Samuel Colt made a gun that would kill anything, even demons. We used – _I_ used it on Azazel. Anyway, she stole it, and we thought we'd caught up to her, only she'd skipped town and called the Feds on us for good measure."

He paused, glancing at her as if he was searching for something. "Hendrickson and Reidy showed up and arrested us, and took us to holding at a small sheriff's office. And Lilith attacked. Her guy killed Hendrickson's boss, and Reidy, and possessed Hendrickson and used him to kill the sheriff. We…" He paused. Despite the seriousness of the situation, this part always made him laugh. "Sam had managed to grab a rosary off Nancy, the secretary who worked there, and we used it to bless the only water we had to hand."

Diana looked like she knew where this was going, but gestured for him to continue.

"Problem was, the only water we had was in the toilet bowl," he got out, before clamping his mouth shut.

She didn't even try to hold it in, just burst out into surprised laughter. When her laughter had died back to the occasional chuckle, he nodded and continued, knowing the next part would kill the mood. "Anyway, we exorcised him, obviously; exorcised the whole damn lot of them. All except one.

"Hendrickson told us to go, that he'd say we'd been killed in the confusion, but Lilith showed up. Less than an hour after we'd gone, according to Nancy's ghost. She tortured them, didn't care if she killed them, because Sam had escaped and she has a real hard-on to kill Sam." He waved away her questions about why a demon would want Sam dead for any reason other than he was human and carried on. "Hendrickson was about to be put on leave. He was pretty sure they were about to section him for being brainwashed by two serial killers when he lit on outta there."

He sighed deeply. "Anyway, that's why his change of tune. What brings you to Bobby's? Other than Ellen saying 'Hey, come see this!' that is."

It took Diana a moment to re-gather herself after Dean's revelation before turning back to him, eyes sparkling slightly in enthusiasm. "Dragons," she told him. "Well, _a_ dragon. It's been spotted in LA. There've been rumors of sightings before a couple of big arrests, and I wanted to make sure it wasn't anything that could harm anyone."


	15. Chapter 15

See part one for header notes.

#####

Dean stared at Diana, expression slightly incredulous, before he suddenly shook himself and reached for his cell phone. He held her bemused gaze as he dialed and impatiently counted the rings until the person on the other end picked up.

"Kenshin?" he asked, "What're you _doing _in LA that hunters have started to take notice?"

The dragon laughed. _"This one is sometimes forced to defend territory, Dean Winchester. You cannot tell me I am not permitted to do this."_

He saw Diana's bemusement fade to confusion and continued to watch as the confusion raced towards shock, smirking as he said, "Yeah, well having to guard your territory should be done when you aren't likely to be seen. We discussed this!"

Kenshin protested that. "_You told me, Dean Winchester. It was not discussed, that it was not."_

"Okay, okay," Dean apparently relented. "I told you to be careful because there were people who would be out to hunt you down if you were seen, but damnit, Kenshin, it's the same thing!"

"_That it is not," _Kenshin told him. _"When I am guarding my territory, I am not seen. I guard my territory in the form I present to humans. If I am forced to defend my territory, I will do so in whatever form is appropriate. LA is my city, and no young upstart will take it from me."_

"Yeah," Dean growled, "Well there's a hunter standing here telling me she's hunting a dragon in LA. _You_ can explain to her about territory and the difference between you guarding it and you defending it. Have fun!"

With that, he threw the phone to Diana, who fumbled the catch but managed to grab it out of mid-air before it hit the floor, Kenshin's protest at him handing the phone over following its arc through the air. "Hello?" Diana asked into the phone.

Dean listened with half an ear as she introduced herself, sipping at his beer as her tone became warmer, the conversation more enthusiastic, and was just about to go back inside when she thrust the phone back at him. Maybe he should have listened to more of that conversation, after all.

"He thinks it's a good idea for the kids to receive some instruction," she told him. "He wants to discuss taking them to Vegas to meet whatever a Shishou is."

It was Dean's turn to gape. "He wants them to meet his _teacher_?" he demanded. "Kenshin," he said into the phone, "You're either trying to kill your teacher, or Diana's impressed on you exactly how bad these kids are and you're trying to get them killed. Which is it?"

Kenshin laughed softly. _"Maybe a little of both, Dean Winchester. It will be good for Shishou to be brought back into this world for a time, and he raised the son of a peasant as samurai, so four unruly youths should present no problem."_

Kenshin's voice was a little too amused as he continued, _"Besides, Saitoh is visiting him from Kyoto."_

Dean's eyes narrowed. "This is the guy who used to sneak into your dorm room and sprinkle salt in the corners? Because that was really childish and if I can help you get him back, I'm all for it. See you in Vegas, man. We'll get stocked up on supplies tomorrow, set off the day after. You need us to bring anything?"

Diana was shooting him an odd look, obviously surprised at the speed with which he had acquiesced. "What?" she asked.

He glared at the phone, muttering about manipulative little red-headed shits, before he looked up. "Dragons pay great attention to detail. This Saitoh guy was on the other side during the Japanese civil war, and even though they generally get along, there's this whole one-upmanship going on. Only, last time Saitoh did something to Kenshin, I wound up trying to keep a dragon from going nuts because he knew something was out of place and couldn't find it because Saitoh worked salt into the carpet pile in the very corners of the dorm room. Took us three days to figure out."

"Dorm room? I didn't think you'd ever been to college?"

Dean shrugged. "You try hiding from an over-protective RA who also happens to be a dragon when you're trying to keep a discreet eye on your kid brother. It ain't gonna work."

Diana laughed. "Caught you, did he?"

He snorted. "Oh yeah, and how. Dragged me into his dorm room to bawl me out. He's like five feet nothing and maybe a hundred pounds, but damn if he isn't scarier than anything else I've met when he's mad. I had to convince him I wasn't there to hurt any of 'his' kids, and then he made me explain why I _was_ there, and then we just kinda got to talking. He'd keep me updated on Sammy and we'd meet up if I was swinging by that way for any reason. They shed their claws like cats, you know?" he added. "Got a couple made into daggers with his permission."

Diana laughed, a sound which was suddenly abbreviated by a huge yawn which made her jaw crack. "Oh," she murmured, covering her mouth with the hand not holding her beer bottle, "Excuse me."

He shook his head in amusement. "So," he said, "You're riding with me and Sammy in the Impala, day after tomorrow, right?"

"I'm what?"

"Well," he explained, "I'm driving the Impala, and Sammy always rides with me, and there's no way in hell I'm having those kids in my baby."

She stared at him a moment, then doubled up, laughing. "All right, Dean, I'll save you from the big, bad Ghost Facers, don't worry. On the condition that Maggie rides with us. Then neither of us will have to kill either of you because of testosterone poisoning. Deal?"

Dean considered a moment, then nodded, offering his hand so that they could shake on it. "This means you don't get to go mooning off over 'Victor' and getting in the wrong car, right?" he clarified.

She ducked her head slightly, embarrassed at being caught. "How'd you know?" she asked, making him smirk in amusement. "Okay, so maybe it was a bit obvious."

He inclined his head in acceptance of her comment. "He's a good guy," he told her. "He's not me," he added, making her laugh again, "but yeah. Good guy. You should go for it."

She fell quiet for a long moment, studying his face with such intense scrutiny that he almost shifted under her gaze, before nodding. "I'll take that under advisement," she told him before turning back to the door. "See you in the morning. And don't stay out here too long! It's getting cold."

Turning to the door, she bounced off Sam's chest with an "Oof!" Sam paused to steady her as Dean rolled his eyes with a muttered, "What is this?" he demanded, "Grand Central Station?"

Sam snorted. "You," he informed his brother, "need to sleep, not stand out here drinking and freezing your ass off. Letting Bobby find your corpse when you've been chewed up by Rumsfeld wouldn't be the greatest way to pay him back."

Diana laughed softly, calling her goodnights over her shoulder as she made her way to the stairs.

Dean waited until she had moved out of earshot before turning to Sam. "Yeah, well, Castiel showed up earlier. Was out past the junkyard when Hendrickson spotted him. Asked me what the hell the glow was."

Sam gaped slightly at Dean's explanation. "Wait, what?"

"Victor Hendrickson can see angels in their true form. Can't help but wonder if he can see demons too."

"What?" Sam asked, "Like before your deal came due? When you were freaking out and then shot that cop before Bobby and I even knew he was possessed?"

Dean ducked his head sheepishly. "Yeah, well," he demurred. "Anyway, Castiel showed up, then when he'd gone, Diana came for a chat. You think her and Victor'll invite us to the wedding?" he asked speculatively, getting a little sidetracked.

That drew an amused snort from Sam, who shook his head. "Not a clue, man. C'mon. We need rest before we deal with whichever of the kids we wind up with tomorrow."

Dean let a smug smirk spread across his face. "Might have already sorted that one out, Sammy. Diana's riding with us. She's bringing Maggie too. Am I awesome or am I awesome?"

Snorting, Sam shook his head. "You're something, alright," he agreed, taking the empty beer bottle from Dean and herding him back into the house. It was a sign of exactly how tired Dean really was that he allowed the shepherding gesture without comment.


	16. Chapter 16

See part one for header notes.

#####

Sam knew the evening's peace, or what passed for peace in the world of the Winchesters, wouldn't last. He just didn't know exactly how soon that peace would be shattered. He jolted awake at what must have been the first sound Dean made; a heartrendingly terrified whimper, like no sound he had ever heard his brother make before; and he was moving to shake Dean awake when his older brother screamed, an awful, strangled sound.

He scrabbled his way to Dean's side, getting tangled in the bed sheets and almost dropping sideways down the narrow gap between the single bed and the first of the pair of camp beds in his haste. He righted himself and shook Dean hard, just once, before pulling back out of striking range.

He was catching a fist as the door slammed open to admit Ellen and Diana, both women looking slightly haunted at the sounds Dean had been making. The sound of the door bouncing off the wall shocked Dean the rest of the way to wakefulness, even as Hendrickson came up from his own camp bed armed and ready, though how he had slept through the scream Sam would be hard pressed to guess.

Sam idly noted the not quite awake, but perfectly ready posture and couldn't help but compare it to Dean's tendency to go for a weapon when woken unexpectedly. Except this time. This time, Dean had practically collapsed in on himself, hunched over and shaking with what would have probably been sobs in anyone else.

Ellen was the first to overcome the inertia which had seemed to overcome everyone at Dean's collapse, dropping down next to him and wrapping her arms around him, comforting him as she would have Jo, and it was a testament to how much the nightmare had thrown him that he didn't protest and simply tucked his face into the crook of her neck, trembling against her.

After a moment, they became aware of muttering outside the door as the Ghost Facers arrived from downstairs, only to be sharply hushed by Jo, who made an attempt to shoo them away. They heard Bobby's gruff bark of, "Move!" as the older man cleared a path to the room, poking his head inside. Diana murmured something to him and he nodded jerkily, about as good with these shows of emotion as Dean was.

They heard Jo telling the Ghost Facers to go back to bed, and she too disappeared, not wanting to see Dean like this and apparently guessing that he wouldn't actually _want_ people to see him like this. They heard the door to the room she was sharing with her mother, Diana and Maggie close quietly, but the youths didn't go, and in the end Hendrickson got to his feet as Bobby left, ordering the Ghost Facers to go back downstairs as he did so.

Unwilling to upset the man who was offering them house space, they went, but their discontent grumbles could be heard following them down the steps.

"Want me to deal with them?" Hendrickson asked softly and Sam looked up at him in surprise.

Before he could reply, Dean managed to grind out a hoarse, "Sure." He sounded oddly grateful for the offer.

With a brief exchange of glances, Dean busy trying to pull himself back together, permission seemed to be given for far more than simply 'dealing' with the Ghost Facers. Sam had a pretty good idea, but he wasn't about to leave the room when his brother; his infallible, 'emotions are for girls' opined brother; was having a not so quiet breakdown.

#####

Hendrickson caught the tail end of Ed's, "Well, why is he a hunter if he has nightmares about hunting?" and snorted, startling the four into turning towards him.

"You think this is about hunting?" he demanded with a disbelieving laugh. "You can stand there and tell me that you honestly think that someone raised as a hunter would have nightmares about what he does?"

Ed swallowed, shaking his head energetically and Hendrickson nodded.

"So you were just mouthing off about something you don't understand, same as usual I guess?" he asked mildly, polite smile on his face.

That drew a reaction, Ed and Harry both practically shouting that they knew about ghosts and hunting.

Hendrickson snorted. "So tell me," he asked, in a sickeningly sweet tone, "How would you hunt a demon, boys? Because those brothers are some of the heaviest hitters in the hunting community. They know how to go about hunting a demon. They _killed_ a fallen angel. They didn't just exorcise him; they killed him."

Off their sudden silence and overly blank expressions, he pressed on. "How would you cope seeing your brother stabbed in the back in front of you, by a man whose life he had spared a few minutes previously? Would you make a deal with a demon to bring him back, even though you knew that after a year you would be hunted down by Hellhounds and dragged into Hell?"

They were staring at him now, wide eyed and open mouthed and, for once, blessedly silent, staring in rapt fascination.

"Those two men are some of the bravest people I know," he informed them. "And they and I may not always exactly see eye to eye on everything, but if I catch any one of you mentioning anything about tonight after right now, I will make it my life's goal to get all four of you arrested for whatever minor infraction I possibly can. You'll find it much more difficult to get real hunters killed from a jail cell, and who knows? It might even make you grow up some."

"Wait," Harry got out after a long moment of silence. "You're telling me that Chisel Chest got dragged into Hell? Like fiery pit, ninth circle of, hell Hell?" He shook his head. "No way, man, doesn't exist. Nuh-uh."

Hendrickson snorted. "You tell that to Lilith. Or Castiel, the angel who pulled Dean out of the Pit."

Ed went white. "What, the mother of demons is real?" he asked, voice shaking slightly.

Shrugging, Hendrickson dropped into a chair. "No idea. She might be. She might just be a demon who liked the name. Either way, she's trying to kill Sam because she thinks he's a rival. And she's trying to raise Lucifer so that he can bring about the apocalypse.

"That grave you saw? It was Dean's. He sold his soul to get his brother back, and they couldn't find a way out of the deal. And when Castiel dragged him from Hell, he had to dig his way out of his own grave with his bare hands.

"You wanna tell me again how Dean shouldn't be getting nightmares from hunting?"

#####

Maggie waited until the boys had staggered back to their piles of blankets in the living room before asking her question. "I uh... Jo said Dean's dead good with electronics," she said, wincing as she realized that the choice of words was probably not the best.

Hendrickson gave her a suspicious look, but nodded, and she cleared her throat. "Well, uh, we kinda – well, not kinda. We were at his grave. You knew that," she added, blushing slightly. "You found us there. But I was using my EMF meter and it spiked really high and then stopped working. Do you think he'd help me fix it?"

He stared at her for a long moment, then laughed quietly. "Probably. But ask him before he's had his coffee. There'll be less bitching," he told her. "Sam's used that trick on him a couple of times. Don't think he's figured it out yet," he added. "Too busy worrying about his first cup of the day and by the time he's had it, it's too late."

#####

It was far too early when Dean found himself awake the following morning, but from the sounds downstairs people were already up and about. He glanced at the other beds in the room and tallied Sam and Hendrickson amongst their number, and mentally added Jo and the four kids as he heard steps far faster than Hendrickson or his brother would bother with unless lives were in danger.

Of course, with the two of them in an enclosed space with the Ghost Facers, lives may already be in danger.

He dragged himself to his feet, scanning round for his jeans, then staggered for the bathroom to wash up. The face in the mirror looked more haunted than he could recall it being since those first few days after he got back. Sighing, he turned away and padded barefoot downstairs, hoping to reach the kitchen before anyone else noticed he was awake. He needed coffee before he dealt with anyone.

"Hey Dean," Maggie called, far too cheerfully for this time in the morning. "Can I ask you something?"

He almost winced, staring at her blankly for a long moment. "You just did?" he pointed out after he succeeded in processing what she had said.

She froze, running over her previous words in her head. "Um… yeah," she admitted, then continued, "But everyone says you're the guy to talk to about my EMF meter. I was using it near – well, anyway, I was using it, and it spiked and then shut down and now it won't restart, and I'm really really hoping not to have to buy another one, because it was expensive."

Dean blinked blearily at Maggie, who was between him and the coffee machine in the kitchen. "If I agree to show you how to make an EMF meter from crap you can pick up at Radio Shack, will you let me past to get some coffee?" he managed after a moment, possibly the most complete and well thought out sentence he had ever succeeded in putting together before the first cup of coffee of the day.

Well, managed to think it, at least. What came out was a grunt of assent as he took her by the shoulders and moved her gently to one side and out of the path to the coffee pot. She squeaked happily, clutching one of his arms and bouncing as he looked on in bemusement, before running back upstairs to the room she was sharing with Ellen, Jo and Diana to retrieve her damaged meter and her tiny tool kit for just such electronic repairs.

"You better not be hitting on my sister, Chisel Chest!" Ed snapped from where he had just been pushed over on the stairs. Dean stared at him for a moment, before he decided that Ed was of no relevance in the quest for coffee and left him there, heading instead for the coffee machine, which was relevant.

Sam appeared as he was finishing his second cup, smirking fit to bust. "Man, we really need to keep you away from people before you've had some of that stuff," he told his brother.

"What?" Dean asked, confused.

"Well, you just agreed to show Maggie how you built an EMF meter from scratch, for a start."

Dean blinked at him. "I'm sorry, I did _what_?"

Laughing, Sam told him again. "You agreed to show Maggie – the female Ghost Facer? Ed's sister? – how you made an EMF meter. Were you even conscious, man?"

Snorting, Dean headed for the fridge, rifling through its' contents before giving it up as a fail and heading for the cereal cupboard instead. Gotta be some Cheerios in there somewhere. With a flourish, he seized the box and hunted down a bowl. Minutes later, he was applying himself to the cereal with enthusiasm when Maggie reappeared, dropping the dead meter in front of him.

He stared at it as though it had personally offended him. He caught Sam clamping his hand over his mouth to keep from laughing out loud out of the corner of his eye, but forbore to comment because he was torn between laughing and smashing the thing to smithereens himself.

"Maggie," he said, spoon halfway to his mouth, "We're going into town for some supplies. Do me a favor and tell your idiot brother I'm not hitting on you so I don't have to shoot him, okay?"

"Can't you fix it?" she asked in confusion.

He tore his gaze from the meter. "I _could_ fix it," he admitted, "But it would still be a buggy, failure-prone piece of crap that would burn out if you encountered anything more than a really boring spirit."

She stared at him in surprise, so he pushed his bowl aside. "Look, no offence kid, but you got the sort of EMF meter you'd use to find household wiring under plasterboard. It's pretty sensitive but it's not going to be any good if you're tracking anything beyond a paranormal lightweight." What he succeeded in not saying was, 'Like your brother, after I've killed him.'

He didn't think that would go down so well.


	17. Chapter 17

See part one for header notes.

#####

Maggie was traipsing after Dean to get a ride into town in Bobby's truck; the Impala was too recognizable, Bobby had decreed; when Ed came running up behind her and grabbed her arm. "Where're you going?" he demanded. "And with _him_?"

She pulled her arm away with a roll of her eyes. "We're going to get some stuff to fix my EMF meter," she told him. "We're only going into town."

After a few minutes argument, she saw Dean roll his eyes. "Just bring him with you," he told her mildly. "I'll show you how to bury bodies so that no-one can find them while we're discussing tools of the trade."

Ed protested, but Maggie shot him an assessing gaze. "Does he have to be dead before we bury him?" she asked. "I'm sure there are some things that you just have to bury because you can't actually kill them."

Dean's eyes briefly went distant, obviously remembering something. "Yeah. There are," he agreed. "But no. If you can kill it, you do, and then you salt and burn the remains."

Deciding for once in his life that discretion was the better part of valor, Ed climbed silently into the truck next to Maggie, sure he didn't want her sitting next to the older Winchester, but far more certain that if he sat there Dean was going to kill him before even starting the engine.

#####

Ed had gotten tired of glaring at Dean as he sat at the kitchen table with Maggie, showing her how to construct an EMF meter from an old walkman. The glaring had amused the man until they really got into the guts of the machine and Dean had abruptly stopped paying attention to Ed.

He stalked off to find Kenny, but Kenny was staring enrapt at Jo as the blonde deconstructed and cleaned several pistols on the porch, which left him with Harry. Who was sulking.

And he was mainly sulking because Ed had gone to town earlier without him, and Maggie was apparently fawning over Chisel Chest and there was no internet connection he was allowed to use to play Warcraft. The first two were all on Harry, Ed decided, but the third he could sympathize with.

Could sympathize with right up to the point their host threatened them with a shotgun.

Man, that Singer guy looked like a nice guy but he sure as hell wasn't.

#####

They set off later that day, as soon as they had eaten lunch, and made good time until Dean noticed that the Plymouth was receding in the rearview. He was about to stop and turn back when he caught sight of the police cruiser pulling up as he slowed.

Hendricksen was on his own.

#####

Hendricksen looked up from where he was confiscating the damned hand-held game and realized that the car pulling up wasn't the Impala.

It was a police cruiser.

He almost groaned out loud as the officer got out and walked up to him. "Everything ok, sir?" the man asked.

He was going to_ kill _the Winchesters.

#####

Viv knocked on the door to Jack's office, not waiting for a response before pushing it open. It wouldn't do for him to think he was in charge, after all.

"We've had a hit on a cold case," she told him. "State troopers passed a 1958 Plymouth Fury on the shoulder near Bobby Singer's place. Guy leaning into the back window looked a lot like our missing Agent." She dropped the file on his desk. "What do you want to do?"

Jack shook off the surprise. "The troopers get the registration?" he demanded, already dialing Danny's cell to get him back in the office from a lead on another cold case that would still be there when they returned.

#####

The group had stopped overnight at a campsite that Dean and Sam had assured Victor and Diana was well warded by the family who had run it for generations but, still concerned about having been brought to the attention of the police in even such a minor way, they headed on out just as it was getting light.

They were, therefore, back on the road by the time the government issue sedan pulled up and disgorged two men and a woman who headed straight for the office.

#####

Listening with half an ear to the owner's protestations that they ran a good place here and didn't let the "criminal types" in, Danny discreetly let his eyes run over the guest register. He got plenty of practice in Jack's office, and had made it most of the way through the page that was open before the woman's husband noticed and snapped the book shut on the pretext of clearing space to go through a phonebook.

#####

Hendrickson glared at Sam and Dean as the pair continued to argue loudly as they moved away from the diner with lunch for everyone. They hadn't reacted well to the call from the campsite telling them of the visit from the three FBI agents. Dean had called his friend Kenshin to let him know of the complication, warning him that they may be delayed if they had to lay low.

Shooting the pair of them was looking like a better and better idea all the time. Diana caught his gaze and grinned, and evidently Sammy wasn't the only psychic around because she was nodding her cheerful agreement with a slight wave of a shotgun full of rock salt shells that she was moving to stow in the Impala's trunk. She smirked at his evident frustration, even though he knew she could probably sympathize. He'd read her report about her previous encounter with the brothers Winchester after all, which had said far more about the events surrounding Dean's arrest than she had ever told him on the phone.

Rolling his eyes, he got in his car, the roar of his engine dragging the brothers out of their argument and sending them diving for the Impala. Discussions about whose fault the FBI tail was could wait until they no longer had an FBI tail.

#####

Elena frowned as she scanned the highway ahead of them. "I do not see them," she told Danny, then turned to Martin. "Are you certain that they took that exit?" she demanded, speaking more harshly as she returned her attention to driving.

Martin frowned. "Yeah. Hard to mistake Christine, even in this light," he told her. "Went right, same as that black classic." He shot Danny an amused glance, causing Danny to roll his eyes where Elena couldn't see. "You know," Martin continued, "Like the Winchesters drive."

The look Elena shot him was pure venom, and Danny looked between them thoughtfully. Obviously Elena wasn't as ok as she had claimed to be about him not wanting to start dating her again now that the problems with her ex were resolved. She couldn't seem to understand that he and Martin had been first friendly rivals and then friends for years longer than he had known her, and he wasn't about to give up the only friend he had ever had who could read his mood with just a glance. Who helped him drive Jack up the wall with that same skill, playing along when Jack would have sworn there was no way they could have coordinated their bad behavior.

Viv knew, of course. Viv always knew. And he suspected she had shared with Sam, who was looking at the pair of them with far too much amusement in her blue gaze these days.

He was torn from his reverie as Martin's arm appeared in his peripheral vision. "What's that?" the other man asked.

Danny followed the direction the other man was indicating, towards the flickering lights of a no-tell motel, just like scores of others along these highways, and inexplicably felt a shiver run up his spine.

#####

Dean watched through his binoculars from where he and Hendrickson had pulled onto a narrow track leading into the desert, tucking the cars behind a convenient outcropping of rock. He grunted as Hendrickson dug him in the ribs to demand a turn without words, but handed over the binoculars with little more than a glare threatening revenge.

He almost leaped away as Hendrickson startled. "The hell?" the other man demanded, looking over the binoculars, then back through them. "What the hell _is_ that?" he demanded, handing the binoculars back to Dean after a beat.

Dean frowned at him, but looked, then swore quietly. "We call 'em 'Hotel Californias', after the song. Crop up round here, from southern California all the way to the Colorado border. And the song's accurate. Check in whenever you like, but the only way you're getting out is in a body bag." Off Hendrickson's gesture for more information he elaborated. "Used to be folks would vanish, show up near where their cars were found a few weeks, hell, months later, body desiccated, badly wounded. Wasn't until cell phones took off that people started putting two and two together and getting something other than five. Last calls were usually something along the lines of they'd just found a motel, and were going to stop for the night. Near as anyone can tell, the guy who wrote the song had a lucky escape."

Hendrickson stared at him. "You're telling me that there are motels out there that stalk people who are looking for somewhere to stay, then eat them?"

Blinking in surprise, Dean considered briefly. "Yes," he said after a moment, snatching the binoculars back. "I'm also telling you that your buddies over there just walked into one," he added after a moment to find the building and refocus.

"What?" Dean had to let go fast to prevent skin from being removed from his fingertips. "Those _idiots_," Hendrickson muttered.

Rolling his eyes as he pulled out his cell phone, Dean snorted. "You really wanna know the number of times Sammy and I used those exact words to describe you and your buddy Reidy?" he asked rhetorically, waving away any answer that Hendrickson could offer. "They're civilians. They may be law enforcement, but from the point of view of what we do, they're civilians. You wouldn't have wanted me and Sammy investigating a serial killer when you were a fed. It's not a good idea to let feds investigate the supernatural for the same reasons. You can't stop a human killer with rock salt; sure, it stings like a bitch, but it won't stop a person; and you can't stop a ghost with lead bullets."

With a sigh, Hendrickson relented. "Alright. So what do we do?"

Dean skewered him with a 'You really have to ask?' look, before reaching for his shotgun and rising. "C'mon. We need to get Sammy and Diana and scare the kids into staying in the damn car. I'll call Kenshin, but we can't afford to wait until he shows up."


	18. Chapter 18

See part one for header notes.

#####

Danny didn't like the look of this place. It wasn't that it was rundown; it wasn't, exactly, despite being an older style enclosed corridor motel, and it was a damn sight better than some of the places he had stayed on the FBI's dime; but there was something off about it, and he'd really like to get the hell out of here before he found out what was setting off all his alarms.

From the slightly wild look in Martin's eyes, the other man wasn't exactly comfortable here either, but Elena appeared to have no problem striding across the parking lot towards the check-in. Not wanting to stick around, but less willing to leave a colleague, however antagonistic she was being, to go into this building on her own when it was giving both of them the creeps, they exchanged a glance before hurrying to catch up to her, arriving on her heels as she pulled the door open.

It was something of an anti-climax, finding the check-in desk unmanned but spotlessly clean, the only sign of habitation the rickety old fan turning idly and creating a small breeze in the enclosed space. It was still warm, but not overly so and Danny couldn't for the life of him understand what had made him so apprehensive about the place, except that the alarm bells were still chiming in his head, telling him to grab Martin and Elena and get out any way he could. It was just that there was now that over-riding sense of calm, telling him in a reasonable voice that he should stop worrying.

He only hoped that the reasonable voice wasn't telling him he should stop worrying because now it was too late for his almost tangible apprehension to do any good.

#####

Martin looked around the lobby. It felt terrifyingly familiar, he realized with a growing sense of dread, even as it felt completely different. _Demons_, he thought. Here, too, and probably at least as bad as the one which possessed his father, the one which held his mother's safety over his head at every opportunity. He hadn't figured out why, precisely, the demon was so emphatic he get on Jack Malone's team and stay there, but he was fairly certain that whatever it wanted, he would find out when it wanted him to know and not a moment before, all of which meant that he could do nothing to prepare to thwart it without endangering himself or his mother or, provided he was still alive beneath the demon's over-riding personality, his father.

He jumped as Elena called, "Hello! Anyone there?" and watched apprehensively as Danny cautiously edged behind the counter to poke his head in through the open office door.

"No-one," Danny reported a moment later. "Maybe they're servicing one of the rooms?"

Elena nodded. "Good idea," she agreed and reached for the handle of the door separating the internal corridor from check-in.

Martin's cry of, "No, wait!" came an instant too late, but his grab for her arm to try to prevent her going through the door was just in time for him to be sucked in with her, Danny's shout of alarm echoing in his ears.

#####

Danny made the suggestion without thinking, only shaking off his moment of paralysis to give a warning cry, but it was already too late and Martin; who had the same feeling about the place, but less distance between himself and Elena; managed to grab her wrist just in time to be pulled through the door after her.

His shout of alarm still sounding in his ears, Danny leaped over the counter and through the door, just as it swung shut. Nothing pulled at him, or at least, he didn't seem to pass through the doorway at quite the same rate that Martin and Elena had vanished, and he found himself in a dimly lit, cool corridor. The whine of an elderly air conditioner could be heard in the background, but other than that, all he could hear was silence.

#####

Sam was the one who got the Ghost Facers to promise faithfully that they would remain in Hendrickson's car and not set foot outside. Hendrickson would have paid money to know what he had said, but from Sam's expression he couldn't quite bring himself to ask the younger man.

He had asked Dean what weapons he had thought they would need; after all, he hadn't heard of anyone taking on one of these things – this thing? How many of them were there? – before but then he had only been in the hunting business for a few months and Dean and Sam had been doing it for their whole lives and had probably hunted things he couldn't even imagine, even after reading their father's journal.

Dean had grinned at him, pulling a pair of bandoleers and a couple of webbing belts out of the Impala's trunk, throwing one of each to Sam. His only response to the question had been, "Lots," before he loaded up with various different shotgun rounds, some clips for his nine millimeter hand-canon and several interesting looking knives, each made out of a different metal. Sam had rolled his eyes at his older brother, but collected a similar selection of weaponry in his own belts and shut the trunk firmly.

Hendrickson nodded his agreement and helped Diana chose weaponry from his own trunk when she decided the equipment she had brought along in her own duffel was insufficient. He frowned as she retrieved a large can of hairspray, but his eyes widened in realization as Dean caught the addition and gave her an impressed thumbs up and tossed her his own lighter to use. It stood to reason that Dean would approve of anything which caused fire to go a long way.

With everyone loaded for bear, or demon at least, they made their way cautiously over to the motel, and were just in time to see the door to the internal corridor swinging shut behind someone.

"Not good," Sam muttered as a woman's scream resonated throughout the building.

Dean nodded his agreement and pulled a skein of clothesline from an inner pocket of his oversized leather jacket and held it out in Sam's direction. Sam wordlessly held out his wrist to his brother, allowing him to tie him to Hendrickson, who was confused but also allowed it, then to Diana, who got the idea, and then finally tied it around his own wrist, making a chain of four with Dean at one end and Sam at the other, protecting the two more inexperienced hunters.

Sam shot his brother a jerky nod, before switching out the cartridges in his own shotgun and aiming it at the door, pulling the trigger twice and blowing the door to kindling. The fragments still remaining in the frame began oozing a sticky, dark substance as the air around them groaned as though it were alive. Alive and injured.

"Blood," Diana murmured after leaning in to smell it briefly. "_Old_ blood. This place must be running with the stuff. You think it's what gives it its power?"

The Winchesters glanced at each other. "It's as good a theory as any," Sam said after a long moment. "This may have been a perfectly normal motel at one point. Coaching inn," he amended as he ran through the legend in his seemingly encyclopedic brain. "Whatever. It may have been perfectly normal, and then something happened to bind a spirit, or demon, or something here and it became a Hotel California."

They hesitated in the lobby a moment longer, before Dean said, "Dude, if it was going to do anything to us because you shot it, it would have by now," and led the way into the gaping entrance.

#####

Danny crept along the corridor, not seeming to get any closer to the end, despite the fact that he could have walked around the outside of this place in a couple of minutes. He paused after five minutes and looked back to the door, wondering how far he had come, only to find a corner behind him that he didn't remember turning.

He swallowed hard.

This had been a bad idea; he had known it from the start. His parents may not have been around for much of his life, but he remembered his mother's stories of the supernatural, of spirits both benevolent and evil, and of places where the world was thin, which waited to trap the unwary traveler. Evidently, this was one of those places.

Scrubbing his face with one hand, he turned back, coming face to face with a green-eyed man, who suddenly raised a shotgun. Danny stumbled back, falling over his own feet, as the shotgun barked over his head, thinking, "Thank God he missed," but the man simply reached down and grabbed his wrist, hauling him upright and towing Danny behind him at a fast jog with a yell of, "Go, go, go!" It wasn't until they stopped that Danny even noticed that the man was tied to three other people, Victor Hendrickson, his former classmate, amongst them.

Which meant that the two men were the Winchester brothers. He had no clue who the woman was, but he was stuck in a haunted hotel with his potentially insane former classmate, two serial killers and their girlfriend.

His day really wasn't looking up.

"You okay, man?" Victor asked him.

Danny stared at him, knowing he must look slightly crazed himself and barked out a short laugh. "I've had better days," he confessed, and was that his voice? It sounded oddly high-pitched.

One of the Winchesters – he thought the taller one was Sam – clapped him on the shoulder. "We've been there," he informed him, then handed him a handgun. "I'm assuming you know how to use one of those?" he asked, and the sarcasm snapped Danny out of whatever little world of his own he had retreated into.

He narrowed his eyes at the other man. "I think I might be able to cope," he informed him, matching his tone exactly.

"Great," Dean said from right next to him. "Arm."

Danny blinked. "Arm?"

"Give. Me. Your. Arm," he elaborated, holding up the clothesline he had untied from his own wrist, so that he could tie Danny into the chain between himself and the short woman. Wordlessly, Danny extended his hand and allowed Dean to tie him to the other three, before tying himself back onto the end of the line.

Dean nodded to Hendrickson over Danny and Diana once he was done, apparently letting Hendrickson take over now that they were all securely connected, which was possibly the most comforting thing Danny had experienced since he, Elena and Martin had arrived in the parking lot of the motel.

He didn't know how to feel about finding this group of misfits comforting, particularly given that two of them were officially wanted by the FBI in connection to a large number of deaths, one had supposedly been brainwashed by the first two and the fourth was apparently with the other three voluntarily.

She looked kind of familiar, he decided, but all he was getting as he tried to remember where from was the urge to eat split-pea soup. And he had been staring at her blankly for far too long, because she was frowning at him. "He okay?" she asked Dean.

Danny jumped as water hit the back of his head. "Jeez! Warn a guy, would ya!" he demanded. "That was cold!"

Dean snorted in amusement. "He's fine. Who else are we looking for, man?"

"Martin," Danny blurted, then bethought himself. "And Elena," he added. "Martin Fitzgerald and Elena Delgado."

Dean turned to Hendrickson with his brows raised as Sam turned away from the four to keep watch in the opposite direction down the corridor, shaking his head in amusement and trying to hide his smirk.

"Fitzgerald, I'm guessing he's the deputy director's kid. Don't know Delgado," he added. "Can't see why he'd lie about who he was with, and he didn't react to the Holy Water."

Danny blinked. Holy Water? "What the hell?" he blurted.

"Time to go," Sam called from where he was keeping look out and Danny found himself hustled down the corridor in the direction he thought he had come from. The corner turned in the opposite direction this time, although there was a stain on the carpet near where he thought he had been standing, a shard of mirror at the end of a narrow patch of darkness.

Dean shook his head. "Just keep going," he told Danny. "Help'll be here soon."


	19. Chapter 19

See part one for header notes.

#####

Martin groaned as he pulled himself carefully into a sitting position, hand going to the sore spot on his forehead, but coming away unbloodied. Thank heaven for small mercies, he supposed. He looked around the room – room? Corridor? – for Elena, eventually noticing her slumped in the corner, supported by the two walls and staggered in her direction. As he neared, he decided that the area was a dog-leg in the corridor, giving the illusion of a small room in the dim light.

He reached out for her, intending to check her pulse, but just before he was about to touch her skin, her eyes flicked open and she grabbed his wrist to stop him actually making contact. He had to make an effort not to recoil in a mix of revulsion and shock as her fingers closed on bare skin.

Over the screaming in his head – _wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong_ – he pulled his arm back, slightly amazed that she actually let him go and sat back on his haunches. "You okay?" he managed to ask her after a moment.

She didn't answer, simply blinked at him then staggered to her feet, tottering for a moment before catching her balance. "We need to find Danny," she snapped, starting off without checking to see if he was following.

He scrambled to his feet and hurried after her. Even if there was something wrong right now, she was still his team mate, and he wasn't about to let her go wandering off on her own in this place. He kept a careful arm's length away from her once he caught up, but she barely seemed to notice. For whatever reason, the whole of her being seemed to be focused right now on finding Danny.

She froze suddenly. "_He_'s here," she hissed, more to herself than Martin; and the expression on her face prohibited him from asking who 'he' was; before setting off at a more determined pace. He was a step behind her as they rounded a corner – which was odd. The building hadn't looked large enough from the outside to have a turn in the corridor – and rather than carrying on after the corner, she kept turning and slapped a handful of something powdery over Martin's mouth and nose.

Martin inhaled in surprise and felt the world grey out as he slumped to the floor, barely conscious through the fog of Elena yelling for help, sounding far more like herself than she had since they woke up.

#####

"Help! Help! Danny! Danny, it's Martin! He won't wake up!"

Diana felt the man behind her jerk in surprise and breathe, "Elena!"

All five of them paused.

"Danny?" Hendrickson called his name softly. "I want you to realize that there might not be anything we can do to help either of your friends, okay? And that might be something mimicking Elena and not them at all."

When Diana turned to look at him, Danny was a little shell-shocked, but nodding. "We can – we can check though, right?" he asked, voice hoarse. Diana sensed rather than saw Hendrickson nodding at her back.

"We'll check," he agreed, knowing that Dean and Sam would agree without even glancing in their directions. They might not be the biggest fans of federal agents, but they still looked on them as civilians and wouldn't leave them behind in a place like this.

Danny's head jerked once as he attempted to nod in reply, but as they approached the next corner, the woman's voice shouted again, from much closer this time.

"Too close," Dean murmured from the back of the line. "We haven't traveled far enough for that big a difference. Sammy?"

"Yeah," the younger man replied. "Not sure which."

Hendrickson seemed to get it from the set of his shoulders, but Diana didn't have a clue what they were talking about. "Slow," Hendrickson muttered. "How will you tell?"

Sam snorted. "Need to separate them a bit," he added, voice a low, dark rumble.

Dean started trying doorknobs as they rounded the corner, finally giving up, at least for a moment, as they reached the pair of agents in the middle of the floor and turning to Danny. Danny shot him a questioning look, causing Dean to raise his eyebrows and jerk his head in their direction.

Ah. They were going to take their cues from him.

Great.

So he was going to be made responsible for whichever one of his colleagues the serial killers shot. Nice.

He flinched at the crash next to him as Dean decided that a locked door should be no dissuasion if he wanted to enter a room and kicked the door hard enough to bust the lock out of the frame.

"Great," Sam muttered at him from the other end of the tied line, "Now how do we keep the door shut while we lay salt lines?"

Dean snorted. "I got us a room, genius. You figure the door out," he informed the younger man, before turning to the rest of the group and barking, "Inside." It was easy to see his father had been a Marine.

Getting Martin into the room while the five of them were still tied together, and with Hendrickson clamping a hand on Elena's shoulder to make sure they all stayed together, was more difficult than it should have been. The older Winchester finally growled in impatience, shoved his shotgun into a wide-eyed Danny's hands and hauled Martin over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. Martin whimpered as his stomach impacted with the crest of Dean's shoulder, but otherwise made no move to free himself or otherwise react to the situation, and that worried Danny more than being split up could have.

Martin _hated_ accepting help of any kind; hated it with a deep and abiding passion, and wasn't shy about letting people know his opinion. This quiet man was someone completely different, and Danny wasn't quite sure how to deal with him. Rather than not being awake like Elena had panicked about, he seemed to be awake, but while his eyes were open and he was blinking occasionally, there didn't appear to be anybody home.

He was unprepared, therefore, when Martin moved, shoving to his feet with a speed that was surprising, given his inactivity of only moments previously. Luckily, Hendrickson and Sam Winchester caught the movement and, as the only members of the chain still tied together by this point, quite literally clothes-lined him. Dean moved, grabbing a handful of the back of Martin's suit, hauling him back over to Danny.

"Sit on him if you have to," he instructed as he almost dropped Martin on top of Danny. "Looks like this place has him thralled. You need to be ready in case he does that again."

Danny accepted charge of the once again docile Martin without comment, wedging the other man between the side of the decrepit looking radiator and his own shoulder, hoping it would give him a little more leverage if Martin decided to try to take off again.

#####

Harry was peering through the windshield of Hendrickson's car trying to see what was going on in what appeared to him to be just your average no-tell motel on a desert highway. He thought he saw movement and leaned closer to the glass, only to leap back with a manly yell – and it _was_, he would later insist when Maggie called him a great big girl, it_ was_ a manly yell, because there was no way a Ghost Facer would scream like a girl. Then he had to go ask Chisel Chest for an aspirin for the headache that was induced by Maggie slapping him upside the head – as his line of sight was cut off by what looked like an off-white skirt and dainty sandaled feet as they landed on the hood with a tap that barely disturbed the car.

A pair of golden eyes appeared in his line of sight a moment later, scarlet hair fanning around the pale, almost elfin face with the huge, cross-shaped scar decorating the left cheek.

There was a tap on the car window, and Harry turned, relaxing slightly as he saw a slim Japanese man standing outside, smoking a cigarette, but paled as he realized that the dark shadow next to him was another man – a man bigger even than Sam Winchester.

The slim man dropped his cigarette, putting it out in the sand with the toe of his boot, then gestured for the four to get out of the car. The Ghost Facers looked at each other, before Kenny cleared his throat. "Aren't these the guys we were going to Vegas to meet?" he asked nervously as there was another knock at the window.

The silence between them stretched until suddenly the door behind Ed clicked and was yanked open by the tall man who had evidently grown bored of waiting and put his lock picking skills into practice. Ed yelled in horror as he was pulled from the car, and kept screaming as the man stood him on his own two feet and took a step back.

After several long moments, after Maggie had hidden her face in mortification, Ed realized that he wasn't about to be murdered – well, not unless he kept screaming. The slim man was studying him far too speculatively – and fell into an embarrassed silence as Kenny and Maggie climbed out of the back of the Plymouth and Harry scrabbled over the seat to climb out behind Ed.

"Where is Dean Winchester?" the short red-head asked, and Harry had to think that the glowing gold eyes must have been a trick of the light, what little of it there was this far out in the desert. His eyes were a pale silver which glimmered slightly in the moonlight.

Ed, still mortified by his earlier screamed, coughed. "He's in there," he admitted, pointing at the motel, surprised at the slim man's muttered "Kuso!"

The red-head huffed quietly. "Children," he said resignedly, drawing a laugh from the man mountain who had retreated from the group.

"Just as I always used to say, Bakadeshi," he commented fondly, making the red-head shoot a narrow eyed glare in his direction.

"Hey!" protested Kenny, "They went in to save these guys who were following us. I think they were FBI agents. But they were following us and Chis- uh Dean said that it was our responsibility because they were civilians, even though they're feds and that they wouldn't know how to deal with the supernatural if it bit them on the butt." He blushed, a combination of speaking up in defense of the Winchesters and of almost blurting out their own nickname for the older brother to complete strangers.

Maggie nodded. "Sam said it probably already had, but I don't think he disagreed about going to help," she added.

The slim man snorted, the sound managing to be both resigned and amused at the same time. "Are you sure they aren't related to you, Battousai?" he asked, tone hard edged but more than a little teasing.

"I am certain, Saitou," the red head informed him curtly, before adding in a sly tone, "We should see what can be done to deconstruct this thing's outer shell. It is no bridge, after all."

And that clearly held meaning for the three men, because 'Saitoh' harrumphed and stalked off towards the building as the largest of the trio laughed quietly. The red-head darted after the slim man, steps cat-quiet on the sandy earth, as the large man turned to them. "Get back in the car," he instructed. "Lock the doors, wind up the windows and make certain that you have a bottle of Holy Water to hand."

With that, he was gone, reaching the pair who had already set off faster than should have been possible and leaving the Ghost Facers alone with Christine.


	20. Chapter 20

See part one for header notes.

I make no secret of my dislike for the character of Elena. Also, I am aware that "Indians" is not politically correct, but then, it's Dean's pov.

#####

Away from the youths, Hiko snorted. "Tell me they aren't the kids you're foisting off on me," he ordered Kenshin.

Kenshin smiled beatifically up at him. "I won't tell you that those are the children, Shishou," he promised sincerely, eyes brightly amused and Hiko almost cuffed the young dragon. Instead, he turned to Saitoh.

"This is your fault," he told the other man; the wolf in human form. "I don't know how or why, yet, but someone will know the full story, and they will tell me. Can you two not let go of this silly rivalry? Honestly, you're worse than children."

Saitoh shot Kenshin a mostly amused look as he lit another cigarette. "You couldn't have left your master out of it?" he asked, _sotto voce_, causing Kenshin to shoot him a blatantly false innocent look.

"This one does not know what you are talking about," he said softly. "We should not use the entrance," he added as they reached the outskirts of the parking lot.

Hiko nodded his agreement. "We'll make out own entrance," he allowed. "This way."

#####

Dean traded guns with Sam and handed Sam more of the rock salt shells after taking all the lead shot shells from Sam's bandoleer. "You be okay with three of them?" he murmured and Sam looked round at them.

He shrugged. "Taylor's fine, Fitzgerald's… something. Just keeps trying to get back out into the corridor, I think. He's pretty far under whatever this place's spell is. Taylor's got him pretty much contained, anyway. And Delgado won't do anything in front of her colleagues in case there's a chance she can get out of here and back into the world. We'll need to deal with that at some point, but for now she doesn't think she's been discovered, so she's just laying low and playing the good Fed."

That drew a snort. "You salt this doorway as soon as we're out. There's no lore about these places, and we don't know what will come out when we smash the mirrors. The souls might just escape, but they might come after the first people they can find. The building itself should contain them so no-one outside is affected, but we don't know."

Sam blinked at him. "Wait," he asked, "We? You're telling me you're best buds with Hendrickson now, man?" he asked, somewhat amused. With the thin blue line removed from their relationship, it seemed that Dean and Hendrickson had discovered just how similar they actually were. Dean glared.

"Not one word, little brother," he warned, slapping a container of salt into his hand and gesturing to the other two hunters to precede him from the room, watching until Sam had laid a thick line across the threshold.

With a nod, he led the way along the corridor, keeping hold of the end of the clothesline he had tied to the rickety bedstead in the room they had broken into in an attempt to make sure the building couldn't shift around them

It wanted to, he could feel it, but it seemed the corporeal connection between the two groups was more than it could fight, and as the place became more frustrated with being unable to separate the two groups they could actually see the corridor shifting back and forth ahead of them. Dean stopped them just before the clothesline pulled taut, tying it off on his belt to keep both hands free and pointed up.

He heard Diana gasp in shock as she looked up, but Hendrickson remained silent even though Dean knew he had to be feeling pretty shocked. There were mirrors all over the whole ceiling, showing a corridor that both was and wasn't the same one they were standing in. They were there, reflected in the silvered, slightly tarnished glass, but around them, looking down at them hungrily, were numerous other people in all manner of dress. There were Indians standing listlessly next to cowboys, next to members of what Dean suspected may be members of rival tribes, mingled with hippies and salesmen in cheap suits.

The worst were the hollow eyed children, who stared at them through the glass, little faces unnaturally blank.

Dean swallowed and raised his shotgun, nodding to the other two to follow his lead. "Further down," he directed, gesturing away from them down the corridor, away from the direction they would have to run to return to the room.

The spirits didn't react, but there was something else there, something approaching fast, that was going to react, that was going to object to their actions and probably attempt to take it out of their skin. "Now!" Dean called, almost deafened by the gunshots and then again by the cacophony which took up as glass shattered. "Run!" he added, almost unnecessarily, because Hendrickson and Diana were already moving, leaving him to bring up the rear as they bolted for the debatable safety of company.

The ceiling was still shattering, he could hear the sound of cracks spreading, but above that, in a painful wail, rose the sound of the trapped souls begging for freedom and being unable to reach it. He wanted to stop, to clamp his hands over his ears, but he knew that to stop would be to allow whatever called this place home to win.

#####

Danny stared in amusement as Elena attempted once again to cuff Sam Winchester, who appeared to be tolerating her with barely concealed irritation. It was a little like watching a gnat harass an elephant. Sam was successfully avoiding the cuffs by the simple expedient of standing almost in the doorway and keeping his back to the woman, with his hands firmly grasping the rock-salt filled shotgun. Hands thus kept a good foot apart, Elena had no way of budging him, even if she were not hampered by the doorframe. As it stood, she had no leverage and no way to get any.

She looked over to Danny in mute, frustrated appeal, but Danny had his own hands full stopping Martin from trying to reach the door to escape and rejoin whatever the hell was going on outside. A few minutes after the trio had left, there had been the sound of shots and then an unearthly wailing had taken up, which had set his teeth on edge until Sam had tracked along the walls carefully, putting down what looked to be a line of table salt in a thin but solid line, and then the noise had cut off as suddenly as it had started.

He was about to resort to knocking Martin down and sitting on him when there was a bellow from the corridor and Sam stepped back further into the room, taking Elena along with him, to allow Dean, Hendrickson and Diana to barrel into the room. Dean turned and fired as he stepped neatly across the undisturbed threshold, driving whatever had been chasing them back for long enough for everyone to clear the doorway.

Hendrickson grabbed Elena and spun her off away from Sam and in the general direction of Diana, snagging the woman's cuffs from her belt as she was on the way past and throwing them to Danny, who gratefully cuffed Martin to himself and sat down, holding firmly to the cold and dirty but thankfully very solid radiator.

"You're taking this rather well," Hendrickson commented to Danny as he and Dean made a wide, thickly laid circle around the door with a new can of salt from Hendrickson's pocket, before slamming it and re-laying a line closer to the back of the door. Danny saw Dean's wince as he stepped over the outer salt line, back into whatever it was that was thralling people in the motel, before it was replaced with relief as the new line was completed, far enough back that someone making the door jump in its frame would be unable to disturb it.

And there was someone – or something, Danny's much less skeptical brain whispered to him – making the door jump in its frame. The door rattled as Sam helped force the wooden wedges between the door and the jamb in place of a reliable lock, and bounced in the frame, bowing slightly in the middle, but thankfully the door remained as firmly sealed as the hunters could make it under the circumstances.

With that done, and Diana still trying to keep control of Elena, much taller and heavier than the diminutive former detective, Dean pulled out a silver flask from the inside pocket of his heavy leather jacket, taking a swig and passing it on. Every one of the four hunters drank, then passed it on to Elena, who balked.

"I'm on duty, you idiot," she sneered at Dean, who shrugged in response before turning to offer Danny a mouthful.

Danny stared at it for a moment before reaching a decision. He took the flask and drank as the others had, not wanting to get on the bad side of these 'hunters'; no matter that two were former law enforcement, they were accompanied by two wanted serial killers. Jack could only kill him once, after all, and he had the feeling that having to be rescued by two fugitives and their missing person, accompanied by an ex-cop, would earn that death sentence. He frowned at the flask when he realized it contained only water. Dean smirked at him, taking the flask back and crouching next to Martin, forcing the other man's mouth open and pouring in a good slug of the water before jumping back out of range. It made Danny wonder what the other man knew that he didn't.

He found out less than a second later as Martin went rigid, then rolled over, dragging Danny's arm with him and coughing and puking up the water and whatever else it was that he had ingested.

"You okay, man?" Hendrickson asked, bobbing down next to them as Martin and Danny untangled themselves and Martin slumped back against the wall, face white and breathing labored. He nodded slightly and Hendrickson clapped him on the shoulder. "You'll be fine. Eat something when we get out though."

That suggestion made Danny groan. "Don't encourage him!" he protested. "He eats burgers for breakfast."

Martin snorted inelegantly. "Yeah," he croaked, not bothering to open his eyes as he elbowed Danny, "like you're so perfect. What was that last week? Half a box of donuts? Jack was about to shoot you, you were that high on sugar."

"Hey! I was not! And it was only three, anyway!"

Hendrickson smirked. "Yeah," he informed Martin, "You'll be fine." He got back up, glancing at Sam, who was still guarding the door, before looking to Dean, who was evidently in charge here, whatever Danny's initial thoughts had been on his read-through of the boys' files.

Dean gave one curt nod then gestured Diana to step back from Elena.

As Diana stepped away, three guns were brought to bear, with Diana's following as she stepped out of range. Danny moved to put a stop to it, but found Martin clinging to both his arms with strength he hadn't thought the other man would be capable of at this moment in time.

Elena froze, eyes widening as she stared at the four. "You are crazy!" she informed Diana and Hendrickson. "You're officers of the law and you're siding with two serial killers!" She went to take a step towards Diana, but Hendrickson stepped in closer, raising his gun, as Diana slid back a step.

Dean put the flask on the floor and slid it to Elena. "Drink," he ordered, straightening up. She sneered at him, about to make a comment, Danny just knew, about not taking orders from serial killers, but Dean roared, "Drink!" at her and she recoiled, unscrewing the cap.

Her hand was shaking as she raised it to her lips under his unblinkingly watchful eye and tipped the flask. Dean smirked. "Now," he said softly.

The flask jerked of its own accord, tipping water into her mouth and down her chin and Elena screamed as skin and more sensitive tissue blistered and smoked. Danny recoiled in shock, but Martin simply sighed tiredly and moved his grip to clasp both of Danny's hands in his own, pressing them together in an attempt at reassurance. "That's not Elena," he told Danny softly. "I'm sorry, but it's not. It hasn't been her since we were pulled through the door."


	21. Chapter 21

See part one for header notes.

#####

"That's not Elena," Martin told Danny softly. "I'm sorry, but it's not. It hasn't been her since we were pulled through the door."

He cleared his throat quietly. "If she's lucky, she won't still be in there," he added, tone regretful.

Whatever it was that Elena had become made the mistake of leaping at Dean for the trick with the water bottle, and caught a blast of rock salt to the chest which forced her to back up against the wall. Danny wanted so badly to leap to her defense, but realized rapidly that Martin wasn't about to let him interfere and was using the cuffs against Danny in the same way Danny had been using them against Martin not ten minutes previously.

Then again, if Martin had been hacking up stuff just from being given plain water, plain water from the same source which had burned Elena but had absolutely no effect on himself, he had probably been affected by whatever had happened to Elena. Turning to look at Martin, he found the younger man watching the tableau in front of them with worried blue eyes.

"What?" he asked softly, trying not to put the quartet off whatever it was they were doing.

Martin swallowed hard. "I don't think she's alive in there," he confessed quietly. "She was terrified of taking a drink from the flask, and she was trying too hard to get the younger Winchester into steel cuffs before. Not that I could see much of that. It was… it was like being underwater, I guess. But I think she's part of this place now. I don't… I don't think she's going to be coming back with us."

Danny knew his eyes had widened. Really, he shouldn't be believing this crap, but having seen what happened to Elena, especially after he had drunk from the same bottle himself and been unharmed, he couldn't find it in himself to disbelieve it. Steeling himself, he turned back to where the quartet were finishing up, Sam Winchester having been replaced guarding the door by Diana and Hendrickson, and almost pushed himself back through the wall as a column of black smoke roared towards the ceiling from Elena's mouth. She dropped to the floor without a sound, as if she were a marionette whose strings had all been cut.

The banging at the door suddenly stopped, cut off by the sound of a knife on flesh, and then the light went out.

#####

In the darkness, all Sam could hear was the sound of six people breathing. Carefully, he turned to where he knew the doorway was, reaching out to touch first Diana, then Hendrickson, the past them to touch the wood of the door. As quietly as he was able, he moved closer to it, leaning in from a distance away so that he didn't scuff the outermost salt line with his boot and pressed his ear to the splintery surface. That would need looking at once he got Dean to stop laughing about it, he thought as he tried to pick out more sounds.

"Sam!" called a familiar voice from outside, and he almost wilted in relief.

"Kenshin!" he called back. "We're in here!"

He fumbled with the door, confident that with a dragon present, this place could do their small group no further harm. It was Dean who succeeded in opening the door once again, this time by giving up on removing the wedges in the dark and, after shouting a warning to Kenshin, simply shooting the center out, a move which made Sam roll his eyes in exasperated affection. While it wasn't quite the course of action he would have chosen, there was no denying that it had worked.

As the splinters of wood and the cloud of dust settled, Kenshin came into view, and either Kenshin had somehow got smaller since he was Sam's RA or Sam himself had grown, because he was certain the red head had been taller the last time he saw him. Or maybe it was just because Kenshin was standing in front of a man bigger even than Sam, with long black hair and dangerously amused dark eyes. Japanese, but tall.

A third man was cleaning what might have been blood off a katana, along with thicker things which weren't blood, but probably served the same purpose for whatever creature or creatures inhabited the motel. A large streak of black ichor stained the carpet a short way down the corridor, answering the question about the source of the fluid.

Dean pushed him none-too-gently out of the way, grabbing Kenshin about the waist and whirling him once, seemingly a ritualized greeting of some type, and how had Sam not known that Dean was visiting and probably getting gossip and news about him from Kenshin?

The slim man shot Sam a sly smirk while the larger man appeared to be examining the walls. "Saitoh Hajime," he greeted. "This is Hiko Seijuro. Himura has vouched for you and your brother, for as much weight as his word carries."

Kenshin laughed. "You have trusted my judgment for over a century, Saitoh, surely you can trust it a few hours longer? Though," he added, turning to Sam, "You will forgive this one if we do not introduce ourselves to your new friends in the employ of the Federal government? We have found it beneficial to fly... under the radar, shall we say?"

Staring in surprise, Sam found himself nodding automatically in agreement to Kenshin's final question. He shook himself. "Wait, what? A century?" he asked.

Kenshin nodded as Saitoh rolled his eyes. "Tell the boy," the older looking man told him. "I will not be party to this."

"Are you quite certain?" Kenshin asked, clearly directing his question to Saitoh, though his eyes never left Sam.

Saitoh nodded, bringing his cigarette back to his lips.

"Very well." Attention back on Sam, "But the story will wait, this one feels, until we are somewhere safer than the collapsing confines of a damaged purgatory." He turned and moved through the destroyed door, reappearing moments later herding hunters and FBI agents alike ahead of him.

Hiko rolled his eyes. "Very well," he agreed. There was a crash as his form blurred, and a hole opened in the building behind where he had initially been standing, reaching all the way to the outside. The dark liquid dripped thickly from the shattered walls, and the building around them groaned, but with whatever had been taken out by the two dragons gone, the building's power seemed to be unraveling.

The light from outside was gone, the formerly bright neon bulbs dark and in some cases missing altogether. The lamp in the reception was flickering, and went out altogether as they watched. As they continued to look on, the building slowly folded up, decaying in slow motion, before swirling down into the sand; swallowed, hopefully for good, by the desert.

#####

Castiel flinched as a howl went up from the cohort, and he heard an angry voice raised above the others.

Uriel. Something had happened, he gleaned, and Uriel had decided that Castiel's charge had been the cause.

"Raguel has destroyed our Lord's creation," Uriel snarled. "He has permitted his so called brother to corrupt his thinking and has destroyed a place of Purgatory."

Uriel was more furious than Castiel could remember ever seeing him. He had tried to reason with the archangel, tried to tell him that there had been something wrong with that creation for some time, but nothing would sway him from his ire at the Winchester's destruction of the holding cell which had occasionally appeared somewhat unpredictably in the southern United States.

Unable to stop the enraged Uriel, Castiel hurried to the place where his ward was standing, hoping against hope that he would arrive there before Uriel.

#####

Kenshin and his companions had already left in the direction of Vegas when the temperature abruptly dropped several degrees, frost suddenly beginning to creep across the Impala's windshield.

Dean's hand went lax, luckily only dropping the shotgun he had held a couple of inches into the trunk, as he straightened, alarm bells going off in his head. "Victor! Get Diana and those damn kids outta here," he shouted, grabbing the shotgun again and shoving Sam's weapon back at him.

Everyone looked at him like he had just gone mad, but then Sam caught sight of the same frost that Dean had and herded Hendrickson and Diana across to the Plymouth.

The car was vanishing tail lights in the darkness by the time the coming threat arrived in the form of an incredibly pissed off Archangel. He was practically steaming in the cold air, so furious he was somehow sucking in all the heat. Dean kept hold of the wooden stock of his shotgun, not wanting to touch the metal trigger unless he absolutely had to.

He never got the chance as he was flung backwards through the air, head bouncing off the Impala's trunk and sending him down into darkness.

#####

Sam shouted in denial of what was happening as he heard Dean's head bounce off metal. He moved between his fallen brother and Uriel, raising the shotgun as he did so in a defensive posture, muzzle pointed at the ground for the time being.

The Archangel laughed, the sound making Sam flinch as it reached his brain without the intervention of his ears. "You think to stop me with that _toy_, Mud Monkey," he boomed. "You destroy the Lord's prison and you think to defeat _me_ with your worthless mortal weapons?"

"Yeah, well," Sam muttered, "I gotta try."

He raised the gun and fired, more to distract Uriel from his real intentions than actually to hit the Archangel – it was only rock salt, after all.

Not much use against something as powerful as an Archangel, it only succeeded in bringing a sneer to Uriel's face as he batted the salt from his clothes, but his anger and his dark amusement at what he saw as Sam's pitiful attempt at defense gave Sam the smallest of openings against the ancient being. He mentally leapt for the opening, attempting to exorcise the Archangel as he would have a demon, and felt something shift.

His eyes widened in shock at his success, only to widen further in horror as Uriel caught on to what he was doing and struck him a brutal telekinetic blow. He felt blood gush as his nose broke, and the air went out of him as he struck rock instead of the Impala.

Uriel and his fury, almost tangible as a separate entity, advanced on him, seemingly content to ignore Dean for now as he found a new target for his rage.

"Uriel!" a voice snapped from behind the Archangel, and Uriel ceased his advance on Sam to cock his head slightly in the direction of the newcomer. "Stop this! Your actions would not be looked upon favorably."

Castiel, Sam realized, brow furrowed in confusion. Castiel was arguing with an Archangel for Sam's life; for Dean's life.

Uriel sneered. "This tainted mud monkey has corrupted one of the best amongst us," he growled, voice a low, threatening rumble. "Raguel actively assisted in the destruction of this Purgatory."

Which explained more than it didn't. If Purgatory was some sort of holding area, and if there were several, then things could go wrong. If the wrong sort of being was pulled in, it could quite likely upset whatever balance was achieved between heaven and hell for the area to exist. Which left only one question: Who the heck was this Raguel he was being accused of corrupting?

"It was corrupted," Castiel pointed out. "Amongst the escaping souls there were two demons, and they were mourning the loss of their third. Purgatory was never intended to hold demons. It would have upset the balance, sent it too far to the other side, and they would have been able to twist it in whichever manner took their fancy."

Uriel began to turn away, posture still rigid, and Sam moved to try to put something, anything, between himself and the furious Archangel, hand touching to his nose briefly. He winced in pain. Yep, definitely broken. If he survived this, the black eyes would be spectacular. He must have made some sort of noise, because suddenly Uriel was spinning back and poised to strike.

He stared at the Archangel. If this was to be his death, he wanted to see it coming.


	22. Chapter 22

See part one for header notes.

Thanks to my anonymous reviewers, Randin195 and ReviewerWhoBegsForUpdates

Pleasedon'thateme?

#####

Without a thought to his own safety in the face of his fellow's anger, Castiel stepped between the furious archangel and Sam, protecting his charge's younger brother. It was the same thing, he rationalized to himself as he positioned himself to protect the young man he had once threatened to kill for using his powers; without Sam, there would be no Dean to protect. Not this time.

"Stop this!" he shouted urgently, hoping to pierce the fog of rage surrounding Uriel, even as he spread his wings, mantling protectively between the archangel and his current quarry.

A mistake, it turned out.

Uriel, blinded by rage, even to the presence of another angel, seized hold of Castiel's wings, snatching at them harshly with both his hands and his power and twisted, tearing flesh and bone, heedless of the damage he was doing, intent only on getting past the obstruction to the boy he was determined to annihilate.

Castiel screamed, falling to his knees as he felt a sudden lack of weight on his back, feeling suddenly empty.

Even as he was losing consciousness, white-hot pain tearing through him from his decimated wings, he was aware of a sudden silence surrounding him, a cessation of the voices of his comrades that he didn't realize he could always hear until it stopped.

He had no time to miss them before events moved on, dragging at his fragile consciousness, the world suddenly exploding once again into light and sound and movement as fire roared over his head, with the sound so like a single flap of immense wings; bright, purifying, angelic fire, not the sooty unclean flames of the Pit. Dean – Raguel – had remembered his true self, it seemed.

Castiel blinked up at the figure approaching from behind where he had stood to protect Sam as the boy fell. Uriel's intention to kill Castiel's charge had gone badly awry; his failed attempt doing more than simply pissing off the mortal Dean Winchester. It had woken the dormant Raguel, had gone beyond simply waking him and strayed into Raguel's area of responsibility. Uriel had gone far beyond his assigned duties and was now being brought to account for his actions. Or about to be. He didn't think the Archangel would go down without a fight, and Dean, the mortal shell in which Raguel was encased, was already exhausted.

The last thing he was aware of was Raguel crouching next to him and placing a soothing hand on his shoulder, murmuring softly to him in Dean's low, rumbling drawl and urging him down to the ground; to just rest. With his injuries and his body's own compulsion, he had no choice but to obey.

#####

The impact with the Impala knocked the wind out of Dean, and he lay there a moment until the stars cleared from his vision and he succeeded in forcing air back into aching lungs. He swallowed hard, tasting blood from a bitten tongue as he did so, and tried to push himself up.

"_Stay down,"_ a soft voice told him, and he jerked, looking around for the speaker.

He could see no-one and was about to push himself up on his elbows when the voice spoke again. _"I though I told you to stay down?" _The tone was amused, he realized, but still he could see no-one.

"What the hell?" he demanded, wincing as something objected to the question.

"_Not the question. I will thank you not to use that word again. And I am Raguel."_

Dean lay still to process what the voice was telling him. "So you're in Uriel's weight class?" he asked eventually. "I mean, Raguel's an Archangel and everything, so I'm guessing you and he are both big hitters. You wanna call him off now?"

There was a quiet snort of amusement. _"I intend to, Dean Winchester, but for that you will need to give me your permission."_

"What the-" he cut the comment off abruptly, amending it to, "-heck?" at the last moment, and was rewarded with a laugh which made him feel warm all over. "You're a frickin' Archangel, man, what do you need _my_ permission for?"

"_I am an Archangel," _Raguel agreed, _"But also, Dean Winchester, I am you. And I cannot borrow your body without your permission. Do you grant it?"_

Dean's mind froze. "Do I- You're telling me that you could save my brother's life, but only if I give you permission? Okay, consider this standing permission. You got that?"

"_I 'got that', Dean Winchester," _Raguel conceded, flowing forwards through Dean's consciousness to gently take control from him, a blazing white fire, seemingly as hot as the surface of the sun, but which didn't burn.

From behind the white-hot presence in his mind, Dean saw the moment Castiel lost consciousness. There was a moment he thought he was seeing double, and then there was Castiel and his twin lying side by side on the bloody ground, the only difference between them being the bloody stumps of wings sticking out of the marginally slighter one's back. Raguel-as-Dean stepped over both bodies, continuing towards the flaming cocoon he had made with his power, and Dean was slightly shocked, slightly in awe of the fact that the blast of power which had encased the Archangel? Had come from his own hand.

With barely a thought, Raguel ensured the safety of the mortal man whom Castiel had possessed when visiting Dean by sending him back to his home, his family, before turning all his attention on the flaming cocoon. "You can hear me, Uriel, yes?" he asked mildly, his voice sounding odd to his own ears.

The pause was so long that Raguel thought that Uriel was going to refuse to answer, but then he caught the barely whispered, "Yessss."

"You are to return to our Father," Raguel instructed him. "You have strayed from righteousness, from the path laid out before you. Your actions were far from just, and you will be held to account for your actions by our Father and brethren. You will not harm the mortal who has permitted you to borrow his form, and you will go now, or I will be forced to send you."

Uriel allowed the silence to stretch again, the only sound that of the angelic fire, rustling like a flock of birds as it flickered around him, outlining him in silhouette.

"You would ally yourself with Sam Winchester?" he asked eventually. "With a mortal who carries demon blood. Who willfully makes use of demonic powers?"

Raguel had to fight to keep Dean back, not forcing, but trying to make him understand why it had to be Raguel who did this and not Dean. After a brief, impulsive fight, Dean mentally gave up and allowed Raguel to forge on. "The mortal uses his powers to send demons back where they should be. He will be monitored, but this does not address your own actions here. Your crimes against your brother, and your crimes against people you are pledged to protect. Go home, Uriel." The last was said in a low, flat tone; sadness tinged the angel's whole mien.

Dean, watching from behind his own eyes, wanted to rail against the gentleness in Raguel's tone, the care with which he separated Uriel from his borrowed mortal shell, but the devastation written across Uriel's face when he realized that Raguel would not be swayed from sending him back to his Father wrenched at his heart.

The closest thing he could think was PTSD. Castiel had _said,_ had taken pride, almost, in the fact that angels were soldiers; that they were God's warriors, in much the same way as Dean had followed his own father. Burnout. What must Uriel have seen in his time, his millennia, as one of God's warriors to affect him so badly?

_"You are starting to understand?"_ Raguel asked him softly as the fire faded from the air and the archangel's influence slowly receded into the back of Dean's mind, giving him the chance to get used to using his own limbs again before it let go completely.

And Dean found that he couldn't say no.


	23. Chapter 23

See part one for header notes.

######

Dean watched through a fog as Raguel moved towards the injured Castiel using Dean as a vehicle, intent clear in his mind. For his part, Dean was horrified, but found himself unable to suggest a better course of action when Raguel demanded to know what else he though the archangel should do.

"_It is all I am able to do for him now,"_ Raguel informed him, the tone of his thoughts – his voice? – regretful. "_All that is left for me to do. I will not, I cannot let him die, but you will need to do the rest."_

Dean fell silent, watching as the tattered, ragged remnants of the once beautiful wings were excised from Castiel's back, the damaged angel whimpering pitifully, not losing consciousness despite what must be agonizing pain, as his fingers clenched, digging deep into the Nevada dirt, not attempting to pull away from the evidently torturous ministrations, even when Raguel used small tongues of flame to cauterize the gaping wounds. Dean could tell immediately that it was only a physical cauterizations, though how he knew was probably entirely up to Raguel. Something with the appearance of blood; drying, old blood, thick and sticky and dark brown; still oozed from the wounds, soaking through and coating the back of the trench coat as Raguel carefully redressed his former fellow.

"_It is the last remnants of his immortality,"_ Raguel murmured softly in Dean's mind. _"It will stop soon."_ The angel spent a moment more checking his work, before slowly withdrawing. Dean was on his knees at Castiel's side when he realized he was the only person currently looking out through his eyes, and he spared a brief glance for Sam – _alive_ something inside him confirmed, and he let out a breath he hadn't even realized he had been holding – before cupping the back of Castiel's head in his palm.

Even that light touch made the fallen – no, Dean corrected himself harshly, not fallen: injured – angel whimper in pain and try to curl in on himself.

"Castiel," he murmured, stroking the unexpectedly soft hair under his palm, "hey." And didn't it just figure that the sound of his voice would startle the angel fully awake and induce him to try to lever himself up, still trying to perform his assigned duty. "Hey," he said again as he moved round so that Castiel could see him without craning his neck and pulling at the still-gaping wounds on his back, "Easy. We need to get you into the car."

Castiel's eyes widened and he looked away, still trying to evade Dean, who rolled his eyes and rose from his knees into a crouch, before grabbing Castiel in exactly the same matter of fact manner he would have used with a recalcitrant, injured Sam and manhandled him upright, one arm slung around Castiel's waist and one of Castiel's arms held across his own shoulders. He got Castiel to the Impala despite the angel's repeated attempts to pull away and sat him in the front seat, arranging him sideways on the seat so that there was no pressure on his back – and felt a little selfish for the "And no blood on the seats," which skittered across his mind.

As he watched, as he reached for the door to close Castiel in the car, the angel seemed to sag in on himself and Dean saw the first glimmering of tears starting to track their way down his cheeks. He sighed as he felt Raguel move to the fore again and relinquished control gratefully, because he had _no fricken' clue_ how he should deal with an angel who had just had his wings cut off by someone he may not have liked, but whom he trusted to do his job, to work alongside him for the same cause.

Raguel murmured something soft, in a language Dean half-recognized, like a language he had heard as a child and forgotten until he heard it again, and Castiel looked at him, right at him, eyes feverishly glazed and overly bright. He replied tersely in the same language, voice harsh, roughened from the force of screaming and the effort of not screaming. Raguel nodded, then put a hand round the back of Castiel's neck, pressing his – Dean's – lips to his forehead, a gentle show of affection.

Dean was surprised when Castiel flinched from the touch as though he had been burned and he yanked a surprised Raguel back, moving his hand to Castiel's shoulder to stop him pulling back further. "Hey! Don't! Easy," he soothed, keeping his hand in place until he was sure Castiel wasn't going to try to move again and injure himself further. "Hey, I just need to get the Sasquatch into the back and then we can get outta here, that okay with you?" he asked softly, hoping that the business-like approach he had made use of earlier would still work.

Castiel swallowed hard, but eventually nodded, acquiescing with an ease Dean had not been expecting, but Dean nodded in reply and made sure Castiel was properly in the seat before shutting the door. He mentally muttered to Raguel that maybe he should keep back from Castiel for a while, a lump rising in his throat as Raguel acquiesced without a fight.

It took a little longer to get Sammy into the car. He was barely conscious, but responding reasonably well to direct commands even if Dean had to help him direct his unreasonably long legs. It was only when Dean reached the car that he realized that he should have opened the door, then retrieved his brother, because he would have to put Sammy down in order to open the door, and if he did that, he didn't know if he would have the strength left to pick him back up. He sighed, making the attempt to prop Sam against the car with a gruff, "Just lean on there, Sammy," knowing Sam would probably manage to hold on for at least a few seconds once he let go.

To his intense surprise, Sam was still clinging on, just, when Dean had opened the door and cleared the back seat of Diana's and Maggie's bags, and he just managed to grab hold of Sam as his legs gave out.

Sam blinked at him as Dean sat him in the back seat. "You'n fire's bad," Sam informed him sagely, with a bleary nod, just before his eyes rolled up in his head and he fell back across the seat. With a resigned glare, Dean shoved him further in, making sure no body parts would be caught by the closing door, before heading round to the driver's side and getting behind the wheel. The sudden silence as the sound of the motel burning was cut off was unexpectedly welcome as he tried to sort things out in his own mind. He let his forehead rest on the rim of the steering wheel as he considered.

The FBI agents had fled after a hushed, urgent conversation with Victor, on the pretext of rushing their wounded colleague to hospital, with vague plans to tell the doctor that she had stopped breathing on the way and a confession that they were going to reserve their own places in the morgue as well, because their boss was going to murder them both. Which officially meant that they were Not His Problem any longer. But they had both shared their phone numbers, and they knew how to get in touch with Victor, who knew how to get in touch with him. Or Sam. Whichever.

Victor had, at Dean's shouted instruction, loaded Diana and the Ghost Facers into his Plymouth and taken off in the direction of Vegas. They should go there next. Had to make sure they made it and all.

And Kenshin. His friend, who had turned out to be under the protection of someone who Kenshin had explained was one of the Great Dragons, one of the guardians originating in Japan and China who were in their own ways as powerful as angels but far more neutral and far, far less predictable. He smirked to himself. Lilith wouldn't know what hit her, and that wolf youkai would probably help, just for entertainment value.

Which left him. And Sam, and Castiel, and whatever the hell was up with Raguel being stuck in him. Maybe Bobby would have some ideas. He sat back, glanced over at Castiel and grimaced, wishing that he had helped the angel into the car so that he was sitting the other way around, but knowing that Castiel would probably prefer to hide his face, at least for now. It still didn't mean he enjoyed being able to see everything that made Castiel an angel flowing out of him, staining his back and shirt and coat. It was darkening now, too. Less old blood, it now resembled nothing so much as the spilled crude oil which was shown on newscasts whenever an oil tanker ran aground.

He reached out on impulse and put a hand on Castiel's shoulder again, relieved that Castiel didn't flinch from the touch, but a little worried that he showed no other reaction either. And they'd have to keep stopping for him to wake Sam every couple of hours at least, because Castiel was in no state for Dean even to consider asking him to keep checking on Sam.

There was a sudden thump from the back seat as Sam startled at something inside his own head which jerked Dean from his reverie and he took a deep, fortifying breath before turning the key in the ignition and pulling out onto the highway.

This was going to be one long ass drive.


	24. Chapter 24

See part one for header notes.

#####

"Jack?"

Jack stared at the phone, not recognizing the number and unable to place the hoarse voice.

"Jack, it's Danny. We're at the hospital."

"Hospital? What? Danny, what's going on?" he demanded. He and Viv were an hour out from Vegas, heading towards the last place the missing trio of agents had called from. "Wait, where are you?"

There was silence on the other end of the phone. "Glendale," he managed after a moment. "Glendale Memorial. It's Elena," he continued, tone both horrified and resigned, with none of the usual high-speed babble he associated with a stressed Danny.

He checked the sat nav and considered, glancing across at Viv. "They're in Glendale," he told her and she nodded, not taking her eyes from the road.

"We're about an hour from there," she told him, obviously better acquainted with this part of the States than he was. She shot him an amused look. "I have friends from the Academy at the Vegas field office," she informed him tartly, though her expression was one of amusement.

He nodded, not wanting to disagree with the driver – particularly given that the driver was Viv and turned back to the phone. "We're an hour away, Danny, sit tight." He had a sudden thought. "Danny, what about Martin?" he asked. "Is he with you?"

During a brief silence, during which he assumed that Danny was nodding, he exchanged a worried glance with Viv. "Danny," he reminded gently, "I can't see you right now. Is Martin there with you?"

"Yeah," Danny told him softly. "He's here."

"Okay," he said, "You're going to hang up and make sure that the doctor checks you and Martin out as well, all right? Make sure you tell reception to expect me and Viv. Everything else we can deal with when we get there. You got that?"

There was another drawn out silence, then Danny said in a quiet tone, "Thanks Jack," and hung up.

Jack looked across at Viv, then was forced to grab for the 'oh shit' handle as she did a highly illegal u-turn on the empty highway and floored it.

#####

Jack hurried into the ER while Viv went to park the car. A quick glance around revealed his own personal crosses to bear leaning partially against the wall but mainly against each other at one side of the waiting room. Both younger men looked slightly shell-shocked, Danny's hand clamped tightly, probably bruisingly tight, around Martin's wrist as they spoke in low murmurs, Martin's other hand covering Danny's with white knuckles. Both were tense, their faces pale and drawn.

They fell silent as he approached, expressions resigned and deeply exhausted. Martin looked away after a second, apparently unable to meet his gaze.

"Elena's dead," Danny told him, voice hoarse.

Which explained the shock and the guilt, but not why both younger men were clutching each other like if they didn't the other might vanish. He nodded. "What happened?" he asked, and from the way they looked at each other, he would swear that one of them was about to confess to shooting her.

"The doctor thinks it was some sort of cleaning product," Danny said hoarsely, shooting the barely responsive Martin a worried glance. "Except they couldn't find any trace of it in her system or in the burns it left on her face and down to her stomach. She stopped breathing on the way here. They called it pretty much as we got through the doors."

Jack was watching Martin as Danny spoke, and had a perfect view of the moment the younger agent's face took on a greenish cast. "Over there," he directed brusquely, pointing at the door to the gents and Martin practically ran to the restroom. "He okay?" he asked Danny, who nodded tiredly, slumped back against the wall.

"Think there was some in his drink too, but he didn't have as much as Elena and we lit on out of there after she threw up and we saw the burns."

A blatant lie. Martin poured scalding coffee down his throat like most people drank water, true effort having gone into finding the fastest possible way to feed his caffeine addiction. He narrowed his gaze at Danny. "And you found no trace of the Winchesters?" he asked.

Danny shook his head, eyes dropping, looking utterly miserable. "I should go check on Martin," he evaded, getting to his feet and carefully avoiding contact with Jack as he followed in Martin's footsteps to the restroom, just as Viv appeared in the doorway.

"Problems?" she asked, nodding in the direction of Danny's retreat.

Jack stared at her a moment, processing. "Yes," he told her decisively. "Elena died en route. They're a bit shaken up and Danny thinks that Martin has ingested some of whatever it was that killed her, but I think Martin's been doing his usual routine of hiding from the medical staff. Think you can work your magic?"

It was a dirty trick, he knew, but he also knew that neither of the boys would dare to tell Viv they weren't letting the doctor check them out, let alone attempt to give her any bullshit about it. She gave him a sharp nod and strode for the men's bathroom, disregarding the sign on the door as she marched in.

#####

"Danny? Martin? Is everything okay?"

Both men jumped a little guiltily where they sat on the side next to the wash basins, staring at her with wide, startled eyes. "Viv, this is the men's room," Danny protested, voice practically a squeak.

She folded her arms. "Okay boys, the door's locked. Jack's not coming in. You can cut the bullshit and tell me what, exactly, those boys pulled you out of, or I can call my mother and have her find out."

It was Martin, oddly, who took the lead. "We were driving," he told her, "we'd seen Hendrickson's car turn off the highway with a black muscle car and followed it. They vanished just after dusk, must have turned off the lights and just pulled off the highway," he told her. "They hadn't gone far, or we'd both be dead."

He shot a nervous look at Danny, twisting his fingers into the hem of Danny's jacket where they sat together, and Viv sighed. Of course they were doing the co-dependent, scared little boys routine. It took a lot not to tell them she would separate them if they didn't hurry up and explain, but she succeeded, simply gesturing that they should continue.

Danny cleared his throat. "We found this motel, figured they might have turned in there, so we stopped, but it was really creepy, like every nightmare you ever had. It just…. It felt wrong, and bad and…" he trailed off, not sure what he was trying to describe, but Martin obviously knew exactly what he meant, because he was nodding along. "Elena didn't feel it," he added, feeling the need to defend his deceased team mate. "I'm sure she would have agreed with us if she could have felt it, but she didn't."

Viv felt her eyes go wide. "Mama always called it 'Hotel California'. It's only been called that since the song was released," she told them softly. She sighed. "Guess that answers the question of what happened to Elena."

Martin swallowed hard. "She was possessed by something from the Motel. It was something to do with the mirrors," he told her, face paling slightly, his voice quietly horrified. "There was no-one in the corridors, but if you looked up, there were mirrors all over the ceiling, and there were so many people just stuck there." He finally raised his eyes to hers. "How many people we don't find wind up places like that?" he asked, eyes sad and dark.

She gestured for them to move up to make room for her and hopped onto the sideboard next to Martin. "First of all," she told them, jostling Martin slightly, "Those places aren't common. Second of all, something like that? It will have been collecting souls for years, so really it's only a small percentage of people who disappear who wind up there. Third? Those boys were probably the best help you could have had in that situation, because they are some of the top Hunters in the States. Even if there are a couple of us who occasionally have to lose evidence discreetly. Mama and I are hoping Agent Hendrickson can beat the need to wear gloves into them."

Both Danny and Martin grinned sheepishly at that, evidently recalling something from their meeting with the boys and their former FBI Agent friend.

She patted Martin's arm. "Now, you boys sort yourselves out. Take as long as you need. I'll go speak to Jack. When you're ready, you come on out and we'll get a doctor to give you both a once over. No point feeling bad if someone can do something about it."

Danny gave her a mournful look. "Doesn't chocolate work?" he asked plaintively.

#####

Jack raised his brows in inquiry as Viv reappeared from the gents, an amused smile on her face. Her appearance startled two youths who were about to enter, and they immediately chose to find a different restroom, their eyes round with surprise.

"Trouble?" he asked when she got close enough.

She shrugged. "That would all depend on what you mean by trouble," she told him. "They ran into something my mother's friends would deal with. And someone needs to stop Danny from reading children's books."

He just knew that one of these days his eyebrows were going to meet his hairline. "You're telling me they managed to find a ghost while tracking Agent Hendrickson?" he demanded quietly, glossing over Danny's choice of reading matter.

"No," she demurred. "But reading between the lines, the Winchester boys pulled them out of a bad situation, and they're having a bit of trouble dealing."

Jack rubbed his face with both hands. "Let me guess, they've been introduced to the world of the supernatural in a fairly shocking manner, and they're worried that I'm going to have the pair of them sectioned, so they're trying to avoid me while they come up with a plausible cover story which tells a minimum of lies but also will get past me and my boss?"

Viv smiled. "That would be about it," she agreed, "But I think they had some help already for the cover story. They're just trying to fine tune it to get it past you."

He shot her a querying look and she nodded. "You have a reputation of being able to detect bullshit in a report from a distance of fifty paces," she elaborated. "Don't worry," she added. "I'll give them some discreet pointers on how to sneak the supernatural past Van Doren."


	25. Chapter 25

See part one for header notes.

#####

The first thing Sam was aware of, as he awoke with a groan, was the pain in his head, which throbbed in time with his heartbeat. He sat up cautiously in the back seat of the Impala, feeling like his skull could cave in at any moment and taking in first the large bloodstain on his shirt and, as he touched his face cautiously, down his chin, and then Dean's rigidly set shoulders as his brother drove. The third thing he noticed was the hunched, shaking form of Castiel sat in the passenger seat.

He tried to meet Dean's gaze in the mirror, wondering if what he could hazily remember had really happened, but Dean's eyes, when his brother eventually deigned to meet his own, were carefully blank. But Castiel was still here, in the car with them and because of that, Sam was certain that, whatever had happened after he fell unconscious, it hadn't been good.

The angel's whole posture was a study in abject misery as he curled into the seat sideways, feet almost tucked under him, coat pulled tightly round him as if it were a shield. Dean wasn't even objecting to the angel putting shoes on the upholstery. He was gazing, unseeing, at the passing scenery with tears falling silently and steadily down his cheeks. Sam wanted to reach out to him, wanted to offer some form of comfort, but something held him back.

What seemed like hours later, hours of Dean watching Sam watch Castiel, Dean steered the car to a rest area. Well off the beaten track, the rest stop had a block of rickety looking toilet stalls, a vandalized soda machine – which Dean vandalized further by prizing it open to retrieve three bottles of whichever drink didn't look toxic; and that was telling. Three drinks. For two humans and an angel who didn't require sustenance of the mortal kind – and a handful of slowly decaying picnic tables.

Holding himself stiffly, Castiel moved over to one of the tables and dropped exhaustedly onto the bench seat, posture no less hunched than it had been in the car.

Castiel briefly caught Sam's puzzled look and hunched further into himself.

Dean still didn't speak, simply handed Sam one bottle – Dr. Pepper, he noted with an un-enamored grimace – before twisting the cap off what had to have been the only bottle of water in the machine and actively putting it into Castiel's hand, then staring at him until the angel took a cautious sip, grimacing at what Sam just knew would be a flat, almost bitter chemical taste, but continuing to take another sip, apparently resigned to the fact that he was probably going to end up getting this sort of thing regularly.

Dean sighed, the first sound any of them had made in what seemed like forever. "The water isn't some sort of punishment," he said softly, and Castiel flinched, but Dean pressed on, "It's just something that happens and I know it tastes like crap, but really, it's not a punishment. You don't have to drink it if you don't want to."

Castiel looked up then, eyes searching Dean's face for any trace of a lie. Apparently finding none, he nodded infinitesimally and then offered the rest of the water to Sam, gesturing at his face. Sam gave him a tentative smile before mooching back to the Impala to use one of the side mirrors to clean off his face, making sure that his companions were never out of his line of sight.

Figuring that he should leave Dean to deal with the angel – former angel? – at least in the short term, Sam cleaned the blood off his face and neck; and didn't that just figure? The power worked the same on angels and demons, but for some reason stopping a demon caused only minor bleeding while stopping Uriel had nearly had him bleeding out through his nose, even taking into account the blood caused by the blow to the face. With a sigh, he moved round to the trunk, digging through his duffel for a clean – or at least clean-_ish_ – shirt. Or t-shirt. Anything? That was the last time he left Dean to do the laundry.

He glanced up in time to see Dean sit down next to Castiel and sling an arm around the angel's waist, carefully avoiding his upper back and pulling him to lean against Dean's shoulder. He murmured something quietly as he sipped from his own bottle of Dr Pepper, before resting his cheek on the crown of Castiel's head.

Sam's eyes narrowed and he cocked his head slightly, trying to work something out. An idea was dawning on him, one he didn't much like, and he was hoping he had only imagined what he thought he had seen as he fell unconscious. He ducked his head back down into the trunk as Dean looked up, and when he eventually emerged wearing one of Dean's rock-band emblazoned t-shirts, Dean was holding Castiel's head down on his shoulder, fingers carding gently through the angel's hair – and still avoiding touching the angel's back.

He resolved to ask Dean about it later.

#####

Dean was quietly freaking out. Or not so quietly, maybe. It was just that when he was freaking out he turned into the mother hen from he- An overbearing, heavily armed mother hen. And Sam looked torn between being relieved that he had another focus for his attentions this time and worrying about the angel Dean was still trying to calm down.

Yeah. Like Dean could see that happening anytime soon. Even though the man he had been possessing had been popped free as Uriel had torn Castiel's wings off, the angel still bore an uncanny resemblance to the human, right down to the clothing. And although Dean suspected that he was the only one who was able to see it, Castiel's back was currently permanently stained with something that looked like blood where Dean had been forced to finish what Uriel had started, to prevent Castiel from being trapped somewhere between human and angel, to prevent him from gradually going insane with a foot in each world and being unable to be part of either.

He was glad Sam had been unconscious for the final excising of Castiel's wings, where Dean had made use of Raguel's – his _own_ – abilities with fire and cauterized the wounds as well as he could. And hadn't Castiel's pitiful whimper been far more heart-rending than any screaming he could have done. To Dean's immense relief he had passed out shortly after, leaving Dean to struggle to drag both inert bodies back to the safety of the Impala.

They planned to meet up with Victor and Diana in Vegas, and he was hoping against hope that Kenshin; assassin, kendo master and healer; had decided to wait there also. Diana and Maggie, he knew, had crowded into the car with Victor and the boys when he had bellowed to them to get out of there "Right now!" and he had no clue where the three youkai had gone, but he wasn't going to worry about that now.

With a slightly frustrated huff, he hauled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed, mentally urging Kenshin to answer his phone.

The young youkai did so, practically before the phone had a chance to ring even once and, before Dean had time to speak, Kenshin spoke. "You do not need to order this one to do things like answer a ringing telephone, that you do not," he said softly, but Dean could hear the core of steel in the mild tones, was reminded sharply that his delicately built friend was first and foremost an assassin in one of the bloodiest conflicts of the nineteenth century, as well as being a dragon who was not amused by people tampering with him or his perceptions.

He really didn't want Kenshin plotting any kind of revenge which may involve the Ghost Facers.

"Sorry," he stammered, "Sorry, I didn't know. It's kinda new to me," he added a little defensively, when Kenshin made an amused noise.

"That it is," the red-head agreed affably. "You should speak to your new traveling companion about ways you may keep it under control." Kenshin was silent for a moment. "Shishou, he offers his condolences to Castiel, and offers his assistance, should it be needed. Saitoh is speaking to his contacts to see if there is anything further to be done. He... He is not hopeful, but he is trying." He paused briefly. "You must speak with Agent Hendrickson about his colleagues from New York," he added before abruptly hanging up on Dean.

Dean stared at his phone, not quite believing that Kenshin had just done that. Shaking his head, he dialed Hendrickson's number. "Hey, Victor, you got time to speak?" he asked hoarsely.

Hendrickson laughed. "Always, man. How you doin'?"

"Been better," he said without preamble. "You still got the kids with you?"

That made Hendrickson snort in amusement. "Only until Diana kills them. I'm thinking it won't be long. Why? You need to talk to them before I have to help hide the bodies?"

Dean snorted. "That was more my roundabout way of asking if the MPU had dragged you back in for psychiatric assessment and kidnapping," he admitted dryly. "You didn't have any problems?"

Hendrickson went very quiet. "No," he murmured quietly. "No problems. You. You know that one of them was Deputy Director Fitzgerald's kid?" he asked. "He said he'd try to get my discharge papers backdated a few months, get me invalided out before I detonated my career. Even said he'd fix me up with the guy he saw after he got shot up a couple of years ago, get me the psychiatric all clear."

Dean frowned. "And what's in it for him?" he asked. No way was the kid of a deputy director going to do something like that for nothing.

The other man went silent again, this time for so long that he thought that the signal had cut out. "Victor?" he asked.

"Deputy Director Fitzgerald is possessed," Hendrickson informed him. "He's been abusing the guy for years; said that if he went against him, he'd kill his mother and his sisters."

"Crap," Dean forced out after thinking better of one of his favorite curses.

Hendrickson made an affirmative noise. "It gets worse. This demon has wanted him kept on Jack Malone's team, even if as Victor Fitzgerald he had to appear to be against it. This was the first time the name of one of the demon's targets has come up."

Dean cut right to the chase. "Us or you?" he demanded.

"You," Hendrickson informed him, "Specifically you, not Sam. The rest of us were incidental. I mean, what demon wouldn't love to get four at one blow? But this one is after you personally. Said something to Martin about you being out and the rumors being true. He didn't know more than that.

"I left him with instructions to get himself a tattoo like yours, and told him how to ward a residence. He's got my contact number, but I'm thinking you need to talk to him."

Dean grunted an affirmative. "Yeah," he agreed. "Need to find out if this guy visits New York often, and if so how often he actually goes to Fitzgerald's apartment. Might be he needs to find somewhere else to live where he has thresholds the demon's never crossed. Send me the number. I'll give him a call when we get to Vegas."


	26. Chapter 26

See part one for header notes.

#####

Jack watched Danny and Martin surreptitiously as he made arrangements for the return of Elena's body to New York for collection by her mother. He had already called the woman to let her know what had happened, had made up a convincing lie about a tragic accidental contamination of a soda with drain cleaner, and the woman had been quietly horrified, if accepting. Her daughter was an FBI agent, after all, and like the family members of LEOs everywhere, she had been expecting the call as much as she had been dreading it.

Viv had visited the canteen, bringing the boys back a plate of nachos with extra cheese, but neither man had much of an appetite, simply picking at the food resting on the chair between them. Viv met his gaze and shook her head.

He gave her a 'what do you want _me_ to do' look before having to return his attention to the conversation he was having with the funeral home Elena's mother had selected. "No," he said, a little exasperated as he turned so that he was facing away from his team, "She's being brought in tomorrow on the nine fifteen flight from Vegas. My colleagues and I will meet you from the plane so that we can hand the body over to you and her mother." He listened for a moment. "Yes," he agreed. "Yes. We're all greatly saddened by her loss. Please do so. Now please excuse me, I have two agents who saw the whole thing happen to deal with. One of them ingested some of the contaminated soda. Please excuse me."

Glaring at the phone as he hung up, he wondered when Funeral Directors had become quite so pushy.

He shook himself before turning back to Viv and the boys. Sam was meeting them off the first flight he could get them on, the only logical choice for the task given that she knew precisely the sort of thing Viv and, on occasion, Jack dealt with. She had promised to let Danny and Martin keep their secrets until Jack could gather the whole team together to discuss what had happened.

#####

Maggie jumped off the too-soft motel bed and ran to the window, looking out at the motel's courtyard parking lot as she heard the deep rumble of the Impala arrive, joining Diana where she had been waiting since Agent Hendrickson had knocked on the door to tell her something a few hours ago. Ed was sat in the corner, typing away madly on his laptop as he made use of a nearby wi-fi connection to chat to Harry, and Maggie could cheerfully kill him because Harry was only in the next room, but Harry was too afraid of Hendrickson to tell him he was going next door and Ed was too afraid of Hendrickson to go and knock on the door.

The door to the next room banged open and Hendrickson hurried out, prompting Diana to move as well. Maggie tagged along, leaving her brother to his own devices – not usually a good plan, but right now he appeared to be enough into World of Warcraft that a bomb could go off near by and his only reaction would be to huff impatiently as he brushed the dust off his screen.

Hendrickson was hauling a barely conscious Sam from the back seat as she approached, and Diana was taking charge of a Dean who was struggling to return to the car, but it wasn't until she glanced at the vehicle that she realized why.

A third man, someone she had never seen before, was hunched over in the front seat, not built on quite the same lines as the Winchesters, and wearing a grey overcoat that looked to have oil stains down the back. She rounded the car, noticing as she did so that Dean stopped trying to do an end-run around Diana to reach the car.

The man jerked in surprise as she opened the door, and she bobbed down quickly so that her eyes were on a level with his, reaching out to clasp his wrist in her hand. "Hey," she said gently, because really, the man looked like he might try to bolt at any second. "I'm Maggie. We need to get you out of the car."

He stared at her, eyes wide, as she took advantage of the copious amount of space in the front of the Impala to lean around him and unfasten the seatbelt.

"We should get you a shower," she added, making sure the belt didn't hit him. "I'm sure Agent Hendrickson can help you if you need a hand. Or, um, a bath might be better, I guess," she continued.

Holding out both hands to him, she gestured encouragingly for him to let her help him from the car, and he cautiously reached out, hands grasping hers. She smiled at him, keeping up a soothing litany as she coaxed him to stand, and jumped in surprise, letting out a startled squeak as a hand landed on her shoulder from behind.

The man froze as she jerked her eyes up, but it was only Agent Hendrickson, who smiled at her. "You did good, Maggie. C'mon, help me get him inside. I think I heard you suggesting a bath?" He gave her shoulder another squeeze, before turning to the man. "Okay, Castiel, you manage to walk, or do I need to carry you?"

Swallowing hard, the man looked from Maggie to Hendrickson and back again, and Maggie gave his hands a reassuring squeeze. "How about we start walking and see how far we get?" she asked, giving him a wobbly smile.

Ducking his head, he nodded jerkily, allowing Hendrickson and Maggie to help him across the parking lot. He stumbled slightly halfway there, and Maggie stepped closer to his side, getting her shoulder right under his arm and wrapping her arm around his waist. She was expecting the oil, or whatever it was, to transfer to her arm, but when she glanced down, her arm was as clean as when they had started out.

She swallowed thickly then turned to Hendrickson, eyes wide. The man shook his head slightly, warning her off commenting on the situation. She nodded briefly behind the man's hunched shoulders, agreeing to leave the questions until later, before returning her concentration to getting the young man into the motel room Hendrickson had been sharing with Harry and Kenny.

They were met halfway across the parking lot by a Dean who looked entirely unlike himself, and who was trailing Diana like a small child would trail a kite. He reached them and managed to take the man from her and Hendrickson with almost no effort, the man sagging against him with a sigh.

Maggie watched Hendrickson and Diana exchange an amusedly resigned glance before Hendrickson coaxed Dean into letting him help get the man over to the room. She followed, trailing the pair with Diana, who had a bottle of peroxide in one hand and a ball of cotton in the other, where she had apparently been attempting to clean up an injury for Dean before he had made good his escape.

To her intense surprise, the physically undemonstrative Dean carefully arranged the unknown man so that he was lying on his side on the bed which, up until a few minutes ago, had been the boys'. Harry and Kenny were still engrossed in the game of Warcraft they were playing with Ed and, like Ed, probably wouldn't look up for anything less than a good sized explosion.

Sam, all twelve feet or so of him, had been lying in a boneless sprawl over the couch as he pinched the bridge of his nose despite the pair of magnificently bruised and blackening eyes, squinting in the bright light, but as his brother dragged the other man in, he had sat up with a pained sigh. "You need a hand?" he croaked.

Her own eyes round with surprise – these guys were injured! Why weren't they letting people take care of them? – Maggie retrieved a bottle of water from her bag and handed it to him. It was only half full, but she figured it would taste better than the tap water in this place. He took it gratefully and drank from it slowly, which suggested to her that his throat really hurt, so she offered him a throat drop.

"You okay?" she asked him quietly.

He snorted. "Yeah," he told her, voice slightly better. "I just need about a week to sleep it off." He nodded at Dean and the other man. "They're the ones I'm worried about."

Maggie stared at them briefly, particularly the other man. "Who is that?" she asked softly.

Dean apparently heard the question, because his head came up. "You should tell her," he told Sam, voice just as much a hoarse growl as Sam's.

Sam nodded, patting the sofa next to him and Maggie sat, careful not to come in contact with the huge man, mainly because of the blood which stained the side of his jeans. "That," he told her, "Is Castiel. He was the angel who pulled Dean out of Hell."

She knew she was sitting there with her mouth open, just knew she was gaping like an idiot. She didn't know how long her mind had gone on its little vacation, but she knew; just knew; that the next words out of Sam's mouth were going to be something to do with catching flies.

She was surprised, therefore, when he failed to make a comment at all. She looked up at him, only to catch him staring at Dean with sad eyes. Dean was sitting on the other bed, within reaching distance of Castiel, tolerating Diana's ministrations to the wound on his scalp with bad grace and an irritated expression while Hendrickson dialed for take-out, talking quietly on the room phone.


	27. Chapter 27

See part one for header notes.

#####

Hendrickson was glad he had had the foresight to order soup for Castiel, and equally glad that Dean had nominated himself as the person to help the semi-conscious man. And man he was. He could see the brilliance draining from Castiel, as he became normal, a human, and didn't know if he could force himself not to flinch at the loss of warmth if he had to touch the man.

It was ironic, he decided. He had been in awe of Castiel as an angel, not wanting to come in contact with him out of reverence; out of a desire not to profane such a being with his touch; but it was Castiel as a human that he feared touching, that he flinched away from. Yes, he had helped move the injured angel from the car to the motel room, and with every step his heart had felt heavier and heavier, as though the man's sorrow and deep-seated grief were transferring itself to him.

He shivered slightly at the memory, watching as Dean coaxed the man to eat just one more spoonful. It seemed so out of character for the man he had thought he knew that he frowned. He couldn't even ask Sam about it, because the younger brother had inhaled his own burger, fries and drink despite what had to be an incredibly sore throat from the way his voice croaked, before passing out again on the sofa. Not long after that, he had suggested that the Ghost Facers go next door, and Maggie had asked Diana to join her while the boys began another Warcraft marathon – or rather continued with the original one which had been briefly put on hold for food.

From the angle of Sam's head and neck, Hendrickson decided that a sore throat was going to be the least of the younger man's worries when he awoke.

"Blood loss," Dean had explained shortly, going on to add information about how Uriel had struck Sam to stop him using his powers; about how the blow had broken Sam's nose, which had allowed the stress from trying to separate Uriel from his host to pump blood more freely from already broken tissue. "He'll be fine in a day or so."

The comment was so pragmatic that he wondered just how many times the brothers had played doctor for each other beyond handing over the aspirin for hangovers as he and his own brother had done. How many times they had been forced to stitch each other up or set a broken bone because they would be forced to try to explain the injuries at a hospital.

He wondered guiltily how many times they had been forced to skip the hospital because his own investigation had made the situation too hot for them to risk being recognized.

Dean, it seemed, had finished trying to force soup into Castiel a while back, because he was watching Hendrickson with a dark, contemplative gaze. Castiel meanwhile had fallen asleep, his head resting on Dean's thigh, and given the trail of swooning women the man had left across the country, he really hadn't thought he swung that way.

He cocked his head at Dean, questioning, and Dean shrugged, moving Castiel's head carefully onto a pillow.

"What?" he asked softly as he moved over to Hendrickson's side.

"What do you mean, what?" he asked of the hunter. "You and an angel?"

It took a moment for what he was suggesting to sink in, but when it did he was unprepared for the look of pure, unadulterated rage which filled the other man's eyes. It wasn't Dean looking back at him, the tiny part of his brain not gibbering in terror as it tried to scramble away and hide pointed out. Not Dean, and he had invited the man in and laid the wards around them.

Something altered abruptly, Dean's face losing the rage and instead twisting slightly into an expression that somehow managed to be both pissed off and highly amused. "Hey man," he said, tone approaching mild, "I should have warned you. Uh. Turns out, I've had a ride-along for a while now."

Hendrickson stared at him. "If you tell me now that you really did kill all those people and didn't remember until now, Dean Winchester, I will shoot you where you stand. Are we clear on this?"

The anger disappeared altogether, replaced totally by the amusement. "Cute," he commented. "No. But you're gonna pitch a fit anyway, I guess."

"What could be worse than some bugaboo using you to kill people?" Hendrickson asked, trying to imagine something that could be worse and failing. Well, apart from the Ghost Facers on a caffeine bender, but he couldn't really see them possessing anyone.

He really hoped they couldn't possess anyone.

He returned his attention to Dean in time to see the other man roll his eyes. "It's not worse," Dean pointed out. "But you're still going to pitch a fit." He fell silent, twitching slightly as he apparently tried to figure out how to say this.

"I… Look, I told you about Sammy, and how he's special, right?" Hendrickson nodded in agreement, so Dean continued, "Well, there used to be a whole load of those kids. They didn't all make it to where the demon – Azazel - took them to pit them against each other, but of the ones that we knew the names of? Sam was the only one with an older sibling who wasn't a twin."

Hendrickson stared at him. "So, what? You were supposed to be the one the demon took?"

Dean shook his head. "No, I wasn't supposed to exist. Apparently…" He tailed off again, considering his words. "Apparently, _someone_ knew Sammy was going to come out on top in the end and sent someone else to make sure it happened by hook or by crook. Only Raguel got _stuck_."

Blinking at Dean, Hendrickson turned the name around in his mind, feeling it out. "Wait, -el is 'of God' in Hebrew, right?" he asked after a moment, then his eyes widened. "You are _not _telling me that the serial killer I chased across the States is some sort of angel?"

Sheepishly, Dean looked down at the floor. "I told you that you wouldn't like it," he murmured.

#####

The Ghost Facers had initially protested going to stay with the huge man who had shown up with Kenshin at the motel, but after having the options explained to them – learning about real Hunting from Bobby, or learning about it from Hiko – they chose the option less likely to arrange for their swift meeting with the business end of a shotgun.

Leaving them at a motel to wait for the man himself, along with Diana and Victor, Dean and Sam packed the car and headed to see Hiko to let him know where the group was staying.

#####

It was Kenshin who opened the front door when they rang Hiko's doorbell. The redhead took one look at them, light purple gaze flicking from Dean to Sam, to the mostly out of it Castiel supported carefully between them. He sighed. "You should come in, that you should," he said softly. "Shishou is arranging somewhere for the young ones to stay while they are here. He is ensuring no Internet access, that he is."

Dean snickered. "I like your master," he told Kenshin with a smirk while Sam rolled his eyes next to him.

Kenshin nodded abruptly, gesturing for them to follow him into the building and through to the back where he apparently had his own set of rooms, arranged like a small apartment with two bedrooms, a seating area, a bathroom and a kitchenette.

He directed them to put Castiel down in one of the bedrooms and laid his hand across the man's eyes, commanding him to sleep. If there was one thing no-one; no human, no angel, no youkai; could resist, it was a command from a dragon to sleep. Most of the tension abruptly dropped out of the man's form and Kenshin smiled.

"Come," he told Sam and Dean. "We should eat, and you can tell me the whole story about how an angel came to fall."

#####

Kenshin made them tell the whole story through from start to finish, from Dean's rescue from Hell through to the last confrontation with Uriel. He let them bounce the story back and forth between them, some parts being told out of order as they remembered things, and didn't interrupt. When they had finished, he nodded.

"Will you tell me again?" he asked.

Dean turned to Sam, brows raised in inquiry and Sam shrugged. They started again, only to find that this time the dragon did not plan to let them say more than a few sentences before stopping them to ask for clarification on certain points.

When they finished the second telling, both were as exhausted as if they had relived the whole thing, but Kenshin was smiling at them.

"One last thing, and then you may go to bed, that you may. Dean, what is the name of the angel you carry?"

Dean swallowed. "Raguel," he said softly. "It's Raguel."

Kenshin sat back, staring at him contemplatively. After a long, drawn out moment, he nodded just once. "You two may sleep on the pull out couch. I will keep an eye on our companion, that I will," he said eventually.

As he put his plate in the sink; a clear indication that they were supposed to wash the dishes; Sam shot Dean a confused look. Dean shook his head, wanting to wait until Kenshin was out of earshot according to human limitations. He knew that the dragon would hear anything said within his own four walls, but at least from behind a closed door he would have the courtesy to pretend that he had not overheard.

The door clicked shut behind him, and Dean sighed. "I think," he said, testing out an idea as he picked his way through both the conversation and the memories that Raguel permitted him to see cautiously, "that Kenshin knew Raguel before."

Sam blinked at him. "Really?" he asked dryly.

Dean nodded. "Yeah." He mentally traced a memory that Raguel practically threw at him with a roll of his eyes. "They were friends. And Kenshin was worried about him; worried enough to come to the last place his friend had told him he was going." He frowned. "I'm thinking that was the reason he didn't call the cops on me when I was keeping an eye on you when you'd just started college, and then he figured out that I really didn't remember who he was, so he just…. played along with things. Let them lie."


	28. Chapter 28

See part one for header notes.

#####

Sam stared at his brother after his admission, tracing the things about him which had changed since Raguel had been jarred loose and things which had remained the same.

Dean's posture was looser, whether he realized it or not. Sam had no doubt that he could still go from relaxed to pointing a weapon in less time than it took to blink, but he looked less like he was expecting to have to at every turn. He wondered if that was Raguel's doing, or purely because Dean trusted Kenshin.

He didn't want to think his brother looked more confident – Dean was one of the most cocksure assholes he knew, after all – but it was now lacking that almost brittle edge, the edge that could cut but so easily shatter at the same time. It showed most in his eyes, Sam decided, and the way he hadn't started twitching as soon as they hit the Las Vegas city limits. He remembered in Chicago and in Boston that, while Dean had covered it well, he had been about ready to climb out of his own skin by the time they reached the city proper.

"Okay," he agreed at length, and then continued, "You wash, I'll dry. I want to get some sleep some time this century, and I wouldn't put it past Kenshin to come out here if we haven't done the dishes before going to sleep."

#####

Sam had expected Dean to put up his usual fight about sharing a bed with 'a goddamn Sasquatch', or even for him to get some blankets out of the Impala and bed down on the wooden floor, but he simply stripped down to his underclothes without protest and was already asleep by the time Sam turned out the light and got into bed.

Dean didn't move until Sam had settled then, apparently still dead to the world – and for the record, Sam really, really hated that phrase – reached out and curled his hand around Sam's nearest arm in a determined grip.

Huffing quietly in amusement, Sam resolved to tease Dean about it at the earliest possible opportunity before following his brother into sleep.

#####

Maggie jerked awake as a voice sounded right next to her ear. Kenny, she realized as she tried to calm her racing heart. Only Kenny. He had his cell phone held tightly to his ear to hear it over the allegedly relaxing CD of birdsong which was being played at thunderous volume by the driver of the car. It wasn't particularly relaxing at that volume, but had the advantage of drowning out pretty much anything any of the four Ghost Facers could say to the driver, which he was taking as an apparent plus.

She sighed and pushed away to lean on the door as she heard Kenny shout, "No, man," into the phone.

The second half of his shout startled Ed and Harry into staring at Kenny as Hiko Seijuro, one of the last Great Dragons, noticed his passenger trying to use his phone and switched the CD player off. Kenny flushed brightly. "Sorry, man," he mumbled down the phone. "Just calling to let you know that we found the site. Looked like something out of one of those Mysterious World books by that Clarke guy. You know, Tunguska?" He paused briefly. "Yeah, probably. Some kind of comet or meteorite, probably. We didn't get any radiation readings, but the EMF meter crapped out at the middle of the felled trees, and it gave a really, really high reading before it did."

He was silent for a while longer, then agreed, "Sure man, we can send you the data, no problem. Yeah. See ya later, man."

#####

When Castiel opened his eyes, all he could see was soft orange. He jerked back in shock and came to the realization that what he had his face buried in was a mass of red hair, as the person next to him went from asleep to stopping him from falling off the bed in less than a heartbeat.

"You should relax, that you should," the owner of the hair told him in a quiet voice. "You are still weak." Castiel let his gaze run from the red hair, to the calm, violet eyes, to the cross shaped scar on the other's cheek and almost recoiled again, gaining control of his reaction just before he tipped himself into open space.

He stared, eyes wide, as he realized with a jolt that the person he had wrapped himself around while unconscious was a dragon; was the young dragon under the care of Hiko Seijuro, one of the few youkai Guardians of Japan still remaining. The young dragon who had been one of the most skilled assassins of the Japanese civil war.

The young looking man smiled disarmingly. "This one evidently makes you uncomfortable," he demurred. "I will let Dean Winchester know that you are awake," he added as he helped Castiel resettle himself properly on the bed, before rolling to his feet and jumping off in the direction of the door.

He was gone for only a matter of seconds, just enough time for Castiel to move to lean against the headboard of the bed, when Dean appeared in the doorway, expression oddly subdued. "You okay?" he asked, slouching against the wall just inside the door, then changed his mind before Castiel could answer. "Stupid question," he relented.

Castiel stared in shock. Dean usually spoke without thinking. At all. For him to consider enough about what had been said to recant it even after it had been spoken would truly take a miracle.

Dean, it seemed, could now read his expression, because he gave a rueful shrug. "Raguel," he explained softly. "He's the one who helped you after Uriel went bat shit insane and tried to kill everyone."

That was news to Castiel. "Raguel?" he asked softly. "But Raguel has been missing for…" He trailed off and stared at Dean, comprehension dawning. "For three decades," he concluded as Dean nodded.

"He. Well, he was trying to change something and he kinda got stuck. Didn't anyone ever think it was weird that Sammy was the only one of those special kids with an older sibling?" He shrugged, edging over to sit near Castiel on the bed and handed him the water from the nightstand. "Drink," Dean ordered, then stared at Castiel until he took the glass and made himself take a careful sip, grimacing in distaste.

Dean nodded, seemingly in approval as he took the glass back as Castiel's hand began to tremble. "Anyway," he continued, seeming to be a little at a loss. "I'm Raguel. Or he's me. Something. Not quite sure of all the details. We came to an agreement. He doesn't try to take over permanently, and doesn't try to keep me pinned down, and Sammy won't exorcise his ass. Because we've got an exorcism we're pretty sure would work with just a couple of changes."

His expression must have been one of horror, because Dean shrugged. "Possession is possession, whoever's doing it," he explained, as calmly as if he were reading out a passage from a book, but relented slightly, adding, "But the fire thing's pretty cool," with a smirk.

He shrugged again. "Anyway, I promised he could talk to you when you woke up. But you should probably know I'll still be able to hear you, just in case you were thinking of calling me the biggest jackass in history, or something, y'know."

And with that, he seemed to take a step back, everything that made Dean himself pulling away from his face and leaving it relaxed and almost tranquil. His eyes, still green, took on a knowing cast, leaving him looking nothing like Dean but still looking nothing like Raguel.

"Nothing like myself?" Raguel asked, amused, and Castiel ducked his head.

"Forgive me, brother," he murmured, chin almost touching his chest.

Raguel placed Dean's hand on the top of Castiel's head, gesture intended to be comforting but feeling oddly out of place in these mortal shells. The hand was large and warm, the heat seeping through to warm the cold knot Castiel had been feeling in his stomach since his wings had been ripped from him. "There is nothing to forgive," Raguel told him, voice soft, "Save that I was unable to stop Uriel before he did this to you. This body is a warrior's body, but even so, it is not capable of movement as we are. Not with my possessing the boy's soul and not his body."

Castiel caught the almost-flinch which passed through Dean's body at that statement and knew, just knew, that Dean had reacted badly. Possession was not a subject that Castiel had ever spared much thought for; he asked one of the faithful for permission, and they either granted it or didn't, and he left when his task was complete, or the member of the faithful asked, but even he could see how being tied to a soul and not a body would be a problem. Dean, with his years of experience pulling demons from unwilling hosts, would have far more in-depth knowledge about the different types of possession and how exorcisms worked.

Raguel almost grimaced. "He wants to know why I did not inform him of this sooner," he confessed. "It will greatly complicate any attempt to separate the two of us."

Frowning, Castiel looked up, dislodging the hand from his head. "Greatly complicate?" he asked, dreading the answer.

It seemed that Raguel was dreading answering him as much as Castiel was dreading hearing it, because he retreated, leaving Dean to answer. "It would probably kill us both," he admitted. "And that's the best case," he continued, tone grim. "Worst case? Tearing him free shreds my soul and I turn into a demon or a revenant. And he's left damaged enough to-"

"-To end up human, like me," Castiel finished for him.

Dean nodded. "Yeah. Guess I should tell Sammy the exorcism's off," he said, but he didn't get up, just stretched out and leaned against the headboard next to Castiel, toeing his boots off so that he could put his feet up on the bed. "You doing okay? Really? Apart from the... Yeah."

Castiel sighed. "I believe that I am as well as can be expected, given the circumstances," he admitted cautiously. "It has been… It has been a long time since an angel had their wings ripped from them, and I do not recollect how they fared." He sighed, suddenly feeling exhausted, and let his head drop to Dean's shoulder. "Is being human really always like this?" he asked softly. "Lurching from hunger to thirst to exhaustion?"

The shoulder under his cheek jostled as Dean snorted in laughter. "No, man, near as we can figure, that's because your shiny new human body is the equivalent of a newborn. That's all kids really do for the first few weeks. At least we can ask you what's wrong. Wait 'til you hit puberty. I'm making Sammy give you the talk." He must have felt Castiel gathering himself up to lift his head to glare, because he reached out and held Castiel's head to his shoulder. "It's okay," he soothed, ruffling Castiel's hair slightly. "You sleep. We can talk about it later."

Between the warmth from Dean's flannel clad shoulder and the soothing movement of Dean's fingers in his hair, Castiel found himself succumbing to the inviting blackness that was beckoning him.


	29. Chapter 29

See part one for header notes.

#####

Dean jerked awake in surprise at the flash of the camera, and was hot on Sam's heels as he fled the room an instant later, wincing at the startled yelp behind him as Castiel toppled sideways and was startled into wakefulness with a thump of head on pillows.

He knew he had lost when Sam threw the camera across the room to the waiting hands of Kenshin, who took great delight in making it disappear into his jeans pocket, and Dean wasn't about to fight a dragon over a camera. He was impulsive, not stupid.

Sam, on the other hand, was completely fair game, and he tackled Sam to the floor with a sudden leap which caught his younger brother by surprise, expecting as he was for Dean to go after the camera and not the person and tickled until Sam whooped with laughter and yelled Uncle. He knew that Kenshin had pulled out the camera again, but couldn't rightly bring himself to care after he heard quiet laughter from the bedroom door as Sam squirmed to get away from the tickling fingers.

He abruptly rolled away from Sam, making sure to be well out of range of the Sasquatch's arms when Sam had recovered his breath enough to start contemplating revenge and retreated to the kitchen, knowing Sam wouldn't attack if he was holding the fridge hostage. Raguel had been happy to hear Castiel laugh as well, and he wasn't sure if he was happy because Raguel was happy, or if he was genuinely glad that the dour angel had been amused enough to laugh. Well, no, he _was_ happy, but it would be nice to be able to separate out what he was feeling and what Raguel was feeling.

_We can'__t, _Raguel informed him. _I've bonded with your soul, so what I feel, you feel, and vice-versa. It's how I was able to use my gift of fire through your mortal body,_ he added. _Without that ability, Uriel would likely have killed you all and gone after your friends as well._

Dean swallowed at that confession, but resigned himself to it, dragging sandwich fixings from the fridge. It couldn't be any different to how he had been the rest of his life, surely, he thought as he spread mayo on sliced bread, needing something to occupy his hands and in the absence of weapons to clean, this would have to do. The angel had always been part of him and not knowing didn't mean that the angel had had less or more influence if what Raguel had told him in the last couple of days was true. He was rubbing his chest thoughtfully when Sam entered, intent to cause mayhem leaving his eyes as Dean handed him a pastrami sandwich.

He checked to make sure Sam was applying himself to the food before side-stepping him and handing an identical sandwich to Castiel and shooting a glare at the smirking Kenshin. "Shut up," he muttered. "Doesn't your teacher keep beer in this monastery?"

Kenshin shook his head. "Sake?" he asked instead, making Dean roll his eyes. "I would guess that is a no, that I would," he teased with a smile, keeping an eye on Castiel over Dean's shoulder.

Dean turned to see Castiel staring at the sandwich as if it had just spoken to him and made his way back across the room. "Pastrami, lettuce, tomato – Kenshin, your cucumber tried to eat me, by the way. It's gone to the dark side – on wheat bread with some low-fat mayonnaise thing that's supposed to be healthy but probably causes cancer or some shit."

Castiel looked from the sandwich to Dean, then back again as Sam appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, brows raised. "It's good," Sam told him with a smirk. "Just don't eat anything he actually has to _cook_, okay?"

Kenshin was back to smirking again, and Dean turned to him, brows raised in inquiry. "What?" he demanded.

Grinning up at him, Kenshin offered him a cup of sake, waiting for Dean to take it before sipping his own. "I was merely thinking, how the world will cope with _three_ brothers Winchester, that I was." He settled back into his seat. "Who knows?" he added in quiet amusement, "The third one may be the sensible one."

#####

Danny frowned at Martin as the younger man answered his cell phone, puzzled by the way his face had gone from confused to relieved, to anxious. As the last took hold, Danny resolved the issue by lifting the phone from Martin's hands.

"Who is this?" he demanded, all too conscious he could have just pissed off the demon possessing Martin's father.

There was a snort of amusement. "Dean Winchester. You're Danny Taylor, right?"

Danny gaped slightly, then managed to get his voice to work. "Yeah," he agreed cautiously, apprehensive about speaking to a wanted felon, even if he _did_ know for certain that the man was innocent, and vouched for by _Viv_ of all people.

"Good. You need to listen carefully. Make notes if you have to, and your colleague Viv should be able to help. She's related to a friend of mine. I'm going to e-mail you a design for a tattoo. Or my brother is. Whatever. You make sure anyone who might be at risk if the deputy director shows up gets one done. It needs to go over the heart, and it needs to be the design we send _exactly_. Got that so far? No embellishments. Do not let the tattoo artist fiddle with the design."

Danny had scrabbled for a pen, to Martin's apparent consternation, then a yellow legal pad, and was scribbling furiously by this point. "Right," he agreed. "Tattoo. What does it do?"

There was a brief pause.

"C'mon, man, I'm from Cuba. My momma told me all sorts of stories."

Dean seemed to relent. "It stops you from getting possessed," he informed Danny. "The ink doesn't matter; it's the intent. And in a pinch, Sharpies work ok," he added, sounding like he spoke from experience.

That must be one hell of a story.

"You need holy water," he continued, barely waiting a beat, and Danny had to slip into shorthand to keep up. Not that he was likely to forget the instructions which could save his friend's life. "I've got some names of priests you can go see, and there're a couple of retired hunters working in New York I can put you in touch with. Most of all though, you need to make sure Martin moves. The demon's crossed the threshold too many times and it'll need a bigger cleansing than you have the time or skill for. Got that?"

Danny looked across the living room at his friend and nodded. "Already taken care of. We'll go get his stuff tomorrow and he can stay with me."

Martin turned to stare at him, the oddest expression on his face, but he turned away again before Danny could figure it out.

"Good," Dean told him. "Hendrickson told me he explained about using salt to ward thresholds. Make sure you do that whenever you're home. I'll try to get some goofer dust to you as well, or you can ask Viv. Her mom might let you have some. It's better than salt, particularly for demons. You have any questions, you call me. You got that? And do _not_ leave Martin alone with his father. And if his father finds out where he is, you tell him Martin is protected by the guys who took out Azazel, and with or without the Colt he doesn't want to push his luck."

Danny blinked back the urge to snap off a salute and respond to the order with a "Yessir!" He wasn't even given the chance to offer a goodbye as the call ended, leaving him with the caller's number on Martin's cell. He scribbled it down quickly and turned to Martin.

"Instructions," he told him, waving the pad.

Martin blinked at him before snatching the pad and studying what he had written, frowning as he recognized Danny's standard note-taking scrawl. "They really think they can help?" he asked softly, hardly daring to believe that there may be a way out of his own personal nightmare.

Danny shrugged. "Sure sounds like it. And you're moving in here with me, in case you didn't quite catch that. We'll get your stuff from your apartment tomorrow, give your notice to your landlord and get you a PO Box to use for correspondence from the Bureau. Or you can have your mail delivered to the office if you don't want to risk your father using that to track you. Either way."

Hands shaking, Martin dropped the yellow legal pad onto Danny's coffee table and almost fell onto the sofa, arms wrapped around himself in a defensive posture. "I keep expecting to wake up and be back in _his_ house in DC," he confessed, voice breaking. Danny sighed, sitting next to Martin and retrieving the pad to re-write the notes as something they could both read.

"Yeah, well, I don't think I've ever shared a dream with a colleague before, so while it wouldn't be the freakiest thing that'd happened in the last couple of days, it would be pretty high up there, so on the whole I'm going to say it's not a dream and the Winchester brothers, plus Agent Hendrickson, plus Detective Ballard, as well as two dragons, are on your side.

"Besides," he added in an amused tone, "Dean said to tell your father that the guys who killed Azazel were protecting you and that with or without the Colt he shouldn't push his luck." He frowned thoughtfully then, grinning, reached out and pinched Martin.

Martin yelped in pained surprise. "What the hell was that for?" he demanded, thumping Danny with a throw cushion.

Still grinning, Danny nodded. "You're not dreaming," he told the younger man. Martin stared at him like he had just landed on a broomstick for a long moment, then hit him again with the cushion for good measure.

"You're insane, man."


	30. Chapter 30

See part one for header notes.

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Epilogue

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They had left Diana and Victor in Vegas, and wasn't that just a turn up. The pair had succeeded in shedding the Ghost Facers in the general direction of Kenshin's Master. Not that Sam thought that would do Ed and Harry the blindest bit of good, despite Hiko's sheer force of personality, but he knew that Kenny seemed to be more sensible than the former Hell Hounds, and Sam had hopes that with some guidance they could break him of the habit of looking at everything through a camcorder and make a real hunter of him. Too, Maggie had got on well with Jo who, schoolgirl crush on Dean aside, was fairly level-headed if a little prone to shooting first and asking questions later. Not that Sam blamed her of course, being part of the cause of that himself, but he really would like to be able to go into Hunter hangouts without having to do a complete once over of the room, just in case she was already there.

Maybe he should start sending Dean in first? Then he had someone he could at least attempt to hide behind.

Not that doing so would have helped in this particular bar. Castiel was still almost pathetically desperate not to be left alone, and Dean was still coping with the touchy-feely side which was apparently what came with having an archangel living inside you and wanting to comfort an injured comrade. And really, Sam was impressed with how little Dean was letting it faze him.

To Sam's eternal regret, not letting it faze him did not mean that he wasn't doing it. In a small bar in small-town Nevada, well off the beaten track and well away from Vegas and Reno and any of the larger municipal areas.

The first man to object had leaned over the table the three of them had taken over with laptop and maps, hands planted almost in the center of the map of Wyoming Dean had been studying, and demanded that the "fucking queers" take their business elsewhere and was now slumped against the bar. While Dean's enraged bellow of "We're brothers, you dickwad," had settled the minds of the brighter and slightly less inebriated customers – all four of them – the other ten or so had taken the shout to mean it was tourist season and permits were being issued.

With a quiet sigh to himself, Sam got to his feet and split his knuckles on the jaw of the nearest assailant, a guy almost as big as he was, knocking him to the floor and out of the altercation, for a few moments at least, then grabbed his brother's collar; a move which earned him the tail end of an enthusiastic haymaker of a punch to the eye; and shoved him roughly in the general direction of Castiel – their new brother, if he were to take Dean's determined claim seriously. Castiel took the hint and grabbed onto Dean as he almost sailed past with a slightly bewildered, slightly concussed expression and a bloody grin, half leading, half dragging him from the bar and to the Impala, shoving him into the back seat where he groaned and covered his head with dad's jacket.

Sam remained half a step behind, making sure the fight didn't decide that any of them needed to come back and finish what they had started, but it seemed that the fight had become less about the three "faggots" and more about "What your cousin Doris said about our mom at the township cookout" and didn't need any more outside help. One of the four mostly sober guys still positioned at the bar, dodging the brawl as it occasionally made its way in their direction, saluted Sam with his beer and a cheerful smile as Sam ducked out after Dean and Castiel and hopped in behind the wheel of the Impala.

#####

Sam glanced across at Castiel, who was at long last sitting the right way round in his seat, at long last able to_ bear_ sitting the right way round in his seat. Dean had explained about his wings, and Sam still didn't see how Castiel could even stand to have clothes touching his back, but then, he didn't see how Dean could have defeated Uriel when even Sam's power; even Castiel's power; hadn't been enough, so he had made the conscious decision to simply not ask about it in depth. No driving license meant the former angel wasn't going to get a chance to drive the Impala, but that didn't mean he should have to put up with the usual battle of the bands that occurred as Sam and Dean traded off in the driver's seat.

He cleared his throat, unsure of how Castiel would take Sam addressing him directly. It wasn't that they hadn't spoken before, but this was the first time Dean hadn't been there to referee, just in case. "So," he managed to squeak, then cleared his throat and laughed nervously as Castiel's head jerked in surprise. "Sorry, man. I just- Ah. You wanna see what you can find on the radio?"

Castiel shot him an odd, questioning look, but reached out as Sam gestured at the stereo in the center of the dash and flicked it on, frowning as he carefully turned the tuning knob. He flinched at the first station he happened to land on, as one of Dean's favorite guitar solos, courtesy of Sabbath, screamed out round the car. Castiel twitched in surprise and hurriedly yanked the knob further along, to a sleepy protest from the back seat and Sam's eternal relief.

"Driver picks the music," he brightly reminded his brother, who spared the energy to raise a half hearted middle finger at him over the back of the seat before dragging his leather jacket back over his head and muttering something almost inaudible that was probably obscene. For an angel trapped in a human shell, Dean sure had a foul mouth.

As if he could hear Sam's thoughts, Castiel raised a brow in an almost amused 'Tell me about it' gesture. "It's written all over your face," he murmured in response to Sam's look of surprise. He settled on a station where the music was still rock, but more melodic, less crashing guitars, than the previous station, and Sam had to blink in surprise as he recognized the track. The Red Hot Chilli Peppers' 'Scar Tissue' rang out of the speakers, and as he merged with traffic as he moved the Impala from local roads to the main highway heading out of state, he had to smile at the irony. A brief glance back at Dean, bandaged from his bar fight on Castiel's behalf, the one which had taken the combined lifting power of Castiel and Sam to remove him from, and at his own, Dean-inflicted black eye in the mirror reminded him heavily of the music video he remembered being on the big screen in the bar at the student's union. The video could have been made for them.

Castiel caught the wry, almost bitter twist of Sam's lips and reached to change the station again, but Sam shook his head and reached across to stay his hand. "Leave it," he murmured quietly to the former angel. "I think we should go with this one."

With a sad half smile as he caught the lyrics and they registered with him, Castiel nodded and reached instead for the volume knob, turning it up further before leaning back in his seat, half smile still in place, and closed his eyes.

Yeah, Sam thought as he drove, things weren't alright. Not yet. But they were getting there.


End file.
